Man who documented Kerala’s cultural history in frames

Punalur Rajan, who died here on Saturday at the age of 81, was an exceptionally talented photographer who specialised in taking black-and-white pictures of cultural icons.

He is best known for the several celebrated photographs he took of Vaikom Mohammed Basheer, but his camera also captured other great figures of Malayalam literature like M.T. Vasudevan Nair, Thakazhi, S.K. Pottekkat, Madhavikutty and Sukumar Azhikode. Many of those photographs are not just artistically brilliant, but also document Kerala’s cultural history as well. Perhaps no other photographer captured as many rare moments of Malayalam literature and did it with as much finesse.

Two books

He published two books — Basheer: Chayayum Ormayum and MT yude Kalam — and both are collector’s delights.

Besides beautiful pictures of the two most-loved Malayalam writers, the books have photographs of many other remarkable personalities who interacted with them over the decades. Shortly after the publication of his book on MT, Rajan had told this writer that photographing the writer was not as difficult as it was generally thought to be.

MT paid the best compliment ever to Rajan when he said, “He is the spy the god sent to earth with a black-and-white camera.”