Love in the time of Sakura

His domain may be quintessential Bollywood, but there is more to photographer Rohan Shrestha than meets the eye. The 30-year-old, who has a passion for travel, made a trip to Japan last year, which is where the idea behind ‘Hanami’, his first solo exhibition, germinated. A projection photo exhibit, it captures the land of the cherry blossom — the sakura — through a pioneering technique.

The photographer says, “Travel photography is something I’ve always loved and do in my free time. ‘Hanami’ is a result of my love for the sakura and Japanese aesthetic.” It all started in Kyoto last year. “My search for sakura led me there. The colour palette of the cherry blossom and its similarity with infrared images made me experiment with the coloured and converted infrared camera,” he says. The images that he shot in Shinjuku Gyoen garden in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Koyasan were published in National Geographic Tra-veller. “But I wanted to do something more edgy. So I combined two styles of photography — I projected the sakura images on an Indian model, thus embarking on my journey with projection photography.”

So mesmerised was he with Japan that he went back in the autumn of the same year. This time he shot in Kamakura, an hour away from Tokyo by rail. He captured the Japanese temples and monasteries using photographic techniques of zoom, burst and rotational slow shutter. “‘Hanami’ is the fruit of my love for Japan. It’s also my first time with projection photography and video imagery. You can expect to see a lot more of Japan in my works in the future.”

‘Hanami’, that has been organised by the Diesel+ Art initiative, exhibits 18 images from the land of the cherry blossom. Using six ultra-projectors along with a moving image piece housed in the backdrop of print images, this show in Mumbai is a one-of-its-kind projection photography show.