4th January 1998

Stealing a little bit of his soul

These are the faces we see everyday. People we meet and seldom look twice at. Thierry Arensma has looked and looked long and hard.

Two years ago while on a month's visit to Sri Lanka, the French photographer took some extraordinary pictures of the people he came across during his travels. He visited the places most tourists would go to. Pinnawela, Yala, Galle, the hill country.

But the pictures are not touristic compositions of misty landscapes and swelling surf. This body of work, stark, compelling images in black and white, is of people in their natural environment.

Arensma says he seeks through his camera to look within, not merely at the outer covering. And if he felt that he was 'stealing a little bit of the person's soul' when he photographed him, using a Polaroid he sought to make amends by presenting a picture to him immediately. Many of the people he photographed and later presented photographs to were deeply moved, some even to tears, he says. Some had never had a picture of themselves.

There is the Kangany in the tea estate, towel wrapped about his head, the butcher at the Kollupitiya market next to his weighing scale, the fisherman in Galle. There are pictures too of people from Rajasthan in India, again in the same style. "They like to be photographed," Arensma says of his Sri Lankan subjects. His exhibition is titled simply "Portraits–in Sri Lanka and Rajasthan".

Arensma has used two different and out of the ordinary techniques in this exhibition. One, platinum processing involves the use of platinum salt and gelatine on a special paper, similar to that used for water colour painting. The other is called Baryte processing and has also to be done by hand. Both techniques, he says, are rarely used today.

"All the technique in the world is nothing if the subject matter and the photographer are useless. Mr. Arensma has both a great eye and the portraits are fabulous," comments Dominic Sansoni.

A commercial photographer, the 35- year-old Arensma is not quite finished with Sri Lanka. "The countryside is as beautiful as the people. And there are the trees." They merit, in his view, much attention Arensma's exhibition opens on January 7 and continues till January 14 at the Barefoot Gallery. For this exhibition Arensma acknowladges a debt of gratitude to two Lankans, Dominic Sansoni and Gerard Ondaatje. Later the same exhibition will be held in Paris at the Galerie Peinture Fraiche from January 26 to February 1.

-Renuka Sadanandan

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