Panorama, from the Greek πᾶν for “all” and ὅραμα for “view” or “sight”, is a technique used in a photo arrangement or a photo shoot where the camera pans the surroundings bringing together a variety of objects, details, and elements. I wanted each shot to be different from the previous one, telling its own story distinct from the one we had just seen. Interestingly, as I worked on the series, I realised that the shots were becoming an integral part of a larger picture.
This documentary work “Panorama” consists of multiple shots, taken in the streets of European cities, that merge into a long continuous panorama by dint of the technique of collage. As you watch the panorama unfold, your eyes alternately notice or miss the boundaries between individual shots. My interest here was the unique optics involved in bearing witness to the hustle and bustle of street life.
Contrary to a studio shoot with its elaborate focus on just one person or object, documenting the rough and tumble of urban environment is more akin to a chaotic drift with shots often accidentally capturing the occasional random detail, or angle I myself am not necessarily aware of. Our recollections of that chaos get all muddled up in one confusing continuum of shapes, scenes,and colours, while the shots help us deconstruct these recollections into individually identifiable images. This series helped me bring together these two distinct ways of capturing our recollections. My hunch was that watching a documentary of sorts, in the form of a series of photographs taken out there in the street is arguably similar to the way in which humans commit various events to memory, before representing and reproducing their recollections for the benefit of the outside world. Panorama, from the Greek πᾶν for “all” and ὅραμα
for “view” or “sight”, is a technique used in a photo arrangement or a photo shoot where the camera pans
the surroundings bringing together a variety of objects, details, and elements. I wanted each shot to be different from the previous one, telling its own story distinct from the one we had just seen. Interestingly, as I worked on the series, I realised that the shots were becoming an integral part of a larger picture. Contrary to a studio shoot with its elaborate focus on just one person or object, documenting the rough and tumble of urban environment is more akin to a chaotic drift with shots often accidentally capturing the occasional random detail, or angle I myself am not necessarily aware of. Our recollections of that chaos get all muddled up in one confusing continuum of shapes, scenes, and colours,
while the shots help us deconstruct these recollections into individually identifiable images. This series helped me bring together these two distinct ways of capturing our recollections. My hunch was that watching a documentary of sorts, in the form of a series of photographs taken out there in the street is arguably similar to the way in which humans commit various events to memory, before representing and reproducing their recollections for
the benefit of the outside world.