As you walk past the many photographs on display at the State Art Gallery, you will come across unseen photos of maestros Birju Maharaj, Pandit Ravi Shankar, and Hariprasad Chaurasia. While you revel in the beauty of the moments captured, what will really get your attention is the name of the photographer — musician, Jaywant Naidu.
Famous for his soulful Hindustani music on the Hawaiian guitar, the photographer in Jaywant has been at work since a few decades. “I started clicking photos when I was about 10-12 years old. My first camera was a Rolleicord of German make. That camera was what my father used as well and we could only click about 12 photos on each reel,” says Jaywant with a laugh.
What started as a passion when he was a child — he would “spend all his pocket money on photography” — continued into his teens as well. “When I started, I would shoot cricketers playing at stadiums, like David Gower, Keith Fletcher and many others, all this was in Maharashtra. As I grew up and got busy with music, I started clicking photos of artistes during concerts that I attended,” says Jaywant who bought a Pentax K1000 in the mid 1980s.
“Currently, I use a Panasonic DMCFZ7, it’s a digital camera, but you can’t shoot from long distances, so if and when it is possible, according to my convenience (laughs), I carry my camera and click photos at various concerts. Being an artiste myself helped me know which exact moment to capture. For instance, take Pandit Ravi Shankar’s photo. I have various shots of the legend, but in this shot he was so deep into the raga, that it had to be capured,” explains Jaywant.
The musician, who has innumerable photographs of various artistes, says that it was only recently that he joined a photography group. Jaywant says, “One of my friends told me about the Telangana Photographic Society, so I joined it a couple of weeks ago. It was there that I found out about the photography exhibition and so I asked them if they would be interested in seeing my photos, the rest as they say is history.”
