Shalini Saran (Artist's Statement)

For twenty-five years I used my FM2, that classic created by Nikon. It served me well and the use of it taught me more than photography. But for the last three years it has lain in my cupboard. No, I have not abandoned it for a digital camera. It rests unused because the desire to capture an image has ebbed. Twenty-five years of photography sensitizes one to the subtleties of light, texture, form and colour, and fleeting, evocative images. One is unselfconsciously but continually alert to these. Now, just to see, just to recognize these, is joy enough.

However, something else happened simultaneously. In 2006, a friend downloaded Picassa for me. It is a programme which allows one to play with images at the most basic level. Since I approach new software with trepidation, it took me a while to grasp even the simple possibilities afforded by Picassa. The same friend also gifted me a 3MP camera, a toy I played with. The two defined my first steps towards creating images on the computer.

Soon thereafter, I entered the world of Photoshop. Manipulating a photograph or using it as a ground did not hold my interest for long. I put aside even the 3MP toy, with which I had ventured no further than my living room.

Photoshop has opened up the possibilities of digital art—art created on a computer in digital form. Since I don’t follow instruction manuals the accidental discovery of a tool, and there is a seemingly endless variety of tools, becomes an added excitement to my explorations. I am wholly absorbed by the play of line and texture, form and space, by the emergence of a composition in all its dimensions.

It is a new process, a new journey, one I had not planned. It evolved, as so many things have in my life, of its own accord in the midst of a combination of circumstances.