Legendary American photographer Ansel Adams once said, “Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer — and often the supreme disappointment.” It is a line that sums up the quiet brutality of the genre, and one that Chennai-based photographer Srinivasan Periathiruvadi relates to immediately. “The challenge with landscape photography is that it requires a lot of patience,” he says. “You have to think about composition, what to include, what to leave out.”
Srinivasan has been photographing the wilderness since 2005 and has shown his work in several solo and group exhibitions. This week, he returns to The Folly, Amethyst with a new body of monochrome landscapes titled Mountains and Mugil, that were shaped over years of travelling through high-altitude terrains in Kashmir and Ladakh. His friend Jayanand Govindaraj will exhibit a series of abstract photograph that explore intentional camera movement alongside.
Srinivasan’s photographs distil mountains, clouds, and light into something almost meditative, inviting viewers to slow down and stay with the silence between forms.
“I chose monochrome because it’s a challenge. Today, millions of colour images are made on phones every minute. Black and white strips all of that away, and it leaves you with only tones, light, and form. I wanted to experiment and see how people respond to that on the walls,” he says.
A photograph from Mountails & Mugil
| Photo Credit:
Srinivasan Periathiruvadi
On display are 17 monochrome landscapes, all printed by Srinivasan himself — a final step he treats as part of the creative process rather than an afterthought. “For me, capturing, processing and printing are all equally important. A photograph isn’t finished until it’s on paper,” he says.
Fourteen out of the 17 photographs were shot on a digital achromatic camera — a device that captures photographs only in black and white. “There’s no colour information at all,” he explains. “Most people shoot in colour and convert it later, but this camera records only tones, like the old black-and-white film days. It forces you to think about light very differently.”
If Srinivasan’s images chase stillness, Jayanand’s contribution to the show, leans into movement, abstraction and a little bit of deliberate blur. A photographer since 1962 — long enough, he jokes, “to have shot everything from family birthdays to seven continents’ worth of wildlife”.
A photograph from Pairs
| Photo Credit:
Jayanand Govindaraj
For Jayanand, the shift toward abstraction began just before the pandemic, when he encountered the Field of Light installation at Uluru in Australia — acres of illuminated bulbs that he was compelled to photograph without a tripod. “I had to rethink everything,” he says. Back home, he kept experimenting at night, chasing the way plants, shadows, and passing light could dissolve into painterly streaks. What emerged is Pairs — a series of abstract photographs placed side by side, sometimes clearly linked, sometimes barely, nudging viewers to find the conversation between them.
Though abstraction is his current preoccupation, Jayanand’s instincts were shaped over decades of photographing living subjects. The shift to non-literal imagery did not erase that history; it sharpened it. “Photography isn’t about sharpness or equipment,” he says. “It’s about what you feel when you look at something.” It is a line of thought he returns to often. For him, the point is not technical perfection but emotional resonance.
A photograph from Pairs
| Photo Credit:
Jayanand Govindaraj
Together, Srinivasan’s monochromes and Jayanand’s abstractions make a good argument for slowing down and looking deeper at landscapes, at light, and at the instinct behind the shutter. In a world saturated with colour and speed, the exhibition makes a simple, almost old-fashioned demand: pause long enough for the image to meet you halfway.
Mountains and Mugil and Pairs will be on display at The Folly, Amethyst from November 21 to 23, from 10am to 7.30pm. Entry is free.
Published – November 19, 2025 04:01 pm IST
