The first camera I got was an unexpected present!
A friend of my father, perhaps as a repayment to a favour, brought down a beautifully packed little camera bag that contained a Praktica B200, and two lenses, a 50mm and a 135mm.

That was the second important step in my photography journey. The first was getting the membership of the National Photographic Art Society in 1989.
1991 was my freshman year at the Colombo Medical faculty. My little camera helped me to earn a prominent place among the photography enthusiasts of the Faculty. In the same year I completed my three year diploma at the National Photographic Art Society.

My final year dissertation for the diploma was a thesis on the progression of paintings and photographs. By 1995 I had an award winning collection of photographs that had been honoured at national level competitions. On the 22, 23, and 24 of August 1995, fifty of these photographs were exhibited at the Lionel Wendt Galley and I named the exhibition Nimesha (Moments). Although those images were not on a single theme, I believed they had beautiful and meaningful moments crystalized on print, hence the name ‘moments’.

At the time I knew nothing about Henry Cartier Bresson or any idea about the ‘Decisive Moment’. However, looking back at them now, I feel most of the images of Moments – 1995 belonged to a hastily urbanising era during which travel as well as the documentation of travel with small cameras started to become quite popular.

Except for a few seniors in the photography field, no one took much of an interest in the exhibition. I believe living in an island where a culture of dialogue and critique on photography, art and artistic expression via images was almost non existent, while being oblivious to what was happening elsewhere in the world of art would have contributed to this lack of interest.

My second exhibition, Moments 2019 was a set of visions that got unveiled in front of my eyes while I was travelling to many parts of the world with my family; I felt they were too good to be left alone without being documented!

The people in the images of Moments – 2019 are those who have momentarily unloaded the weight of their labour and livelihoods. The leisure they are enjoying, their smiles or the thoughtfulness that you see in the images is perhaps an integral part of their daily struggle in particular and of entire mankind in general.

I wanted to make Moments-2019 a narrow conceptual bridge to a definitive aesthetico-political terrain rather than a pseudo artistic endeavors that completely hinders the true purpose of photography.

I personally believe this approach towards content, and the relative lack of overzealous formal maneuvers is a departure from contemporary Sri Lankan street photography. Endless editing to achieve a supposed formal perfection is a trend in neo-pictorialism. As per Ed Peters, a contemporary New York Street Photographer, this approach creates constructed abstractions. I believe this approach destroys the true documentary as well as the socio-political value of the visual expression. Most of the images of Moments 2019 are uncropped images. Even the few cropped ones still retain the original aspect ratio making them stay true to what I saw through the viewfinder. No attempt has been made to beautify these images and push them to the realm of neo-pictorialism.

These images differ from contemporary press photographs due to the lack of intent in telling stories. I don’t try to push ideologies via these images, instead I wish the viewer will see the multifacetedness of these images and grasp the complexities in expression as well as the interpretation. In a way this is an attempt to stay true to documentary nature of photography and not to become a victim of neo-pictorialism.

I hope these images will reiterate the natural socio-political documentary nature of the travel photography. I also hope these will show a new dimension and a path to the contemporary young Sri Lankan photographers who try to be glittering stars of the photography field while unknowingly becoming victims of neo-pictorialism without understanding the purpose of visual expression.

Igniting a dialogue in the mind of the viewer and opening doors to a complete aesthetic experience is the intention of Moments 2019 as well as my photography in general.

Mangalanath Udukala