Painting with light, form

HYDERABAD: Ambareesh Pittie is a city-based self-taught photographer who has always been fascinated with heritage structures, and cloud formations and has captured them relentlessly for nearly four decades. Ambareesh is to release a coffee table book titled Without a Map at Kalakriti Art Gallery this Friday. He speaks to CE about his book and fascination for heritage and the sky.

Although Ambareesh specialises in stage photography, landscapes, candid portraiture, and wildlife, his love for heritage remains atop. His multi-faceted approach to photography incorporates 38 years of uniquely innovative and artistic interpretation of his subjects.

“To me, it is as if these old structures talk to me. I just have to spend time patiently and wait long enough for them to start opening up to me. Whenever they open up to me, I notice that the clouds up in the sky for doing their own dance, and that to me was the perfect combination. Despite the passage of time and despite many of them being in ruins somehow, somehow each of these monuments has managed to preserve their character,” says Ambareesh in a poetic tone. He says it is the clouds that transcend the light, the sky, that makes his pictures alive.   

“It all began when I was about 14 years old. My parents gifted me an Agfa Isoly camera. Later I got myself a Nikon EM. Since then, I have been visiting heritage sites quite too often and have developed a fondness towards heritage buildings,” says Ambareesh. 

In India, we are never very far from a historical monument. There is one at every turn and one at every corner. “I grew up in a house which is about 200 years old in the older part of Hyderabad. Heritage, old monuments and buildings were all around me. I naturally took to liking these old structures and over a period of time became enamoured by them. There was a certain beauty and romance in these buildings which really appealed to me and I started photographing them in earnest,” says he. Ambareesh is passionate about light and form, which go beyond the limitations of the photographic techniques.