Kounteya Sinha to showcase his collections in Kolkata

Stone – Being and Becoming explores and captures the romance of being static ---- the story of a rock becoming an astounding architectural wonder to the metamorphosis of us humans turning to stone - the phenomenon of unfeeling. The series of photographs from over 25 countries portray human creations as silent sentries - breathing and alive. The photographs have been taken over 410 days that saw him covering over 95000 kilometres. The photographs also document some of the world’s most stunning pieces of architectural work through windows - not to look out, but actually to look within.

While walking the cobbled streets of Prague, Kounteya came face to face with a building riveted with bullet marks. Further inquiring revealed that the astounding architectural creation standing tall in front of him was once the old town’s pride. The sound of music and laughter, bonhomie and tinkling glasses filled the air around it once. Today, it is only but a shadow of itself – dilapidated, stretch marks all across, a frown on its brow.

Bullet holes all over remind the pedestrian of the building’s traumatic teenage years. What stands today is a grand old dame – neglected and lifeless. No one talks to it anymore, shuns it as the house of a 1000 ghosts. For Kounteya, the visual was compelling. What he saw in it was a parallel to human life. So many of us, he thought, had a similar story. An eventful boyhood, an adventurous youth but a lonely winter at the end of it all.

From Hungary to Australia, United States to Malta, everywhere he went, he found walls and brick that talked. Artistically etched windows stretched out their arms to embrace him.
Kounteya’s photographs are harsh yet lyrical. They are painful yet will bring a smile on your face even at the end of a long and tiring day. His photographs are an extension of that trait. He finds a story in the most unlikely of places, is able to peel off layer by layer to expose the real from the got up.

Kounteya says “I always hear a picture before I can see. I don’t care of shutter stops or aperture. I just want to tell a story that is trying so hard to hide”.

Kounteya’s art is also simple and is a brilliant dash of colour. Interestingly, STONE will unveil to the world a stunning portfolio in black and white. He says “Photography is very similar to a human mind. It oscillates between dark and light. Sometimes therefore you see an image which is as bright as a rainbow smudged. Other times, the only colour you see is more black and less white”.

“If you ever give someone a camera, you will often see how they want to take a picture from an angle that is tough. The picture might be right in front of him but what is in front is always what is simple. Simple never attracted anyone. But my art is simple. Just like life should be. It pays homage to a story.”

He keeps himself as low-key and unobtrusive when he is on the hunt for photographs. Most of the images that he captures were oblivious of the camera and thus truly candid.

Taking a good picture today, he says, is easy. Buy a good camera, that’s all, he adds. But for Kounteya taking a picture is an ode to love. He has several different lenses but he only shoots with the one that a very special person gifted him on his birthday. By being faithful to that lens for years now, the camera, he says has become “an extension of his eye”. He then says “every time I push the shutter, I say hello to that special person”.

The photograph in Japan shows two monstrous buildings jutting out from behind a traditional Japanese house. Kounteya says “For me it wasn’t a picture of new replacing the old but a picture of the old giving beauty to the new. The two skyscrapers almost find an identity because of that old house. On its own, I would have hated them, cursed it for razing to the ground stunning wood houses of ancient Japan to make way for concrete and marble. But because of that old traditional Samurai house in front of it, I almost like the two skyscrapers”.
The other photograph which is Kounteya’s favourite shows five young girls lying in front of whatever remains of the Berlin wall. “It was surreal. Five school girls, completely relaxed, chilling in front of the Berlin wall – one of them texting on the phone and the others enjoying the summer sun. A few decades earlier you couldn’t imagine associating the Berlin wall with peace. Today it is a glorious symbol of peaceful times”.