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| Sunday, 14 March 2004 |
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Dr. M. S. Weerakone Seeing the world in a grain of sand by Kaminie Jayanthi Liyanage
Have you ever looked at the printed image of a rivulet disappearing at dawn into mist-shrouded foliage and actually experienced the cold, the stirring wonderment of that forgotten enchantment with life it revived? The incredible sensation of being one with the panorama caught within that rectangular frame? Perhaps, you will experience just that, when octogenerarian Dr. Mahesha Senarath Weerakone launches Mine eyes have seen, his first collection of photography collated over 60 years, at Lionel Wendt Art Centre at 5.30 p.m. on March 15. A launch that will be followed by a photographic exhibition of 138 exhibits of vivid landscapes, subtly-depicted nudes and colour-splattered abstract photography, open to the public from March 16-17. A veteran photographer, among the handful of such veterans alive today, originating from the era of Lionel Wendt and Harry Peiris (Dr. Weerakone's uncle), this medical practitioner-cum-photo artist tranports us to a sensual elevation where photography is poetry, music, literature and all that ignites the heart and the mind into experiencing what he describes as "seeing the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower." In doing so, he alludes to other giants of the art, Edward Weston, Henri Cartier Bresson, Ansel Adams and Man Ray who made the craft of photography into a fine art equalling music, song and drama. "My photographs are touched by the literature I have read, the poems I have learnt. When I read poetry, I mark the lines which strike me," says this nature lover. "Then, when I go to the country side, I am suddenly struck by the resemblance of those remembered lines to the landscapes I see." For Dr. Weerakone, the pursuit began as a leisure activity, inspired by travel with his father, planter and surveyor Joe Fernando Weerakone, in the hills, the streams and the fields of Ratnapura and later, interspersed between his medical career (in-between patients, the play of fish and quietly turning rivers). It then flowered into an artistic career in which he "wrote with light" and created visual aesthetics with humdrum camera shots, spanning three categories of landscapes, nudes and colour abstracts. For, as he explains, blurb photography is writing with light and the trick, to a certain extent, lies in balancing the contents within the frame in total compositional style. He is a self-taught photographer without the rigours of formal training of many professionals. "When my father bought me a motorcycle, I somehow collected money to buy petrol to drive to the country side and look at nature," he says. Later, he met Lionel Wendt. "He painted, I photographed and we used to have arguments." Dr. Weerakone's education drew from such alliances and from the art books he read at libraries, studying pictorial photography. "In art, exactness is not needed. Leave exactness and do your own thing," he advises. "Take your pictures between 6.30 and 8 in the morning. That's when the sun is brilliant and the dew is new on the leaves." Matisse and Vinunt Van Gogh are among the artists who inspired his photo art. "Matisse said, colour is most important but the object is not important. Ricardo said, the object is important but the colour is only to cover. And Van Gogh made his best pictures when he was insane. When the normal man saw only stars in the night, he saw whorls and whorls in his 'starry nights' which is exactly what the astronomers found in space later." He also refers to Weston, the purist, who said of a mere stone washed by the waters in a stream - "This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be MORE than a rock. Significant presentation, not interpretation." Weston's nudes were said to be not mere unclothed women but those which had exquisite lines, forms, volumes, contrast, suppleness and textures in a myriad styles. For Dr. Weerakone, "Nudes, I thought, always belonged to the countryside. If God wanted to clothe us, he would have sent clothes at birth. So I have created nudes against trees, ponds and other rural scenery." His abstracts are strewn with colour with hidden shapes of women cropping up unexpectedly. Born to Evelyn Soysa at Bandarawela in 1923, and nicknamed "Zorro" for his caprices on the cricket and football pitch at his alma mater, St. Thomas' College, Dr. Weerakone married Lalitha Therese Savitri, daughter of Dr. Hector Fernando of Negombo in 1953. "One of the most tolerant women in the world," he praises her. "I used to leave her in the car and wander for hours taking photographs. She was very cunning. She slept right through it all." "We need an infusion of all forms of art to take us photographers from reality to heights of visual ecstasy, and for that we need to be accquainted with all forms of art," is the concluding advice of this eminent photographer who bridges Sri Lanka's legendary past of photography with his far reaching vision of photo art and the future. The mantle is passed to his only son, Mithra Weerakone, who though in quite a contrasting style, continues his father's tradition. |
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