Kshitiz Anand

One of the interesting discussions I remember we had was in Erik Stolterman’s class on the word ‘design’. Basically, Design can be a noun (when used to define a quality of a product). Design can be a activity (I design things.) Design is a profession. Come to think of it, Design also happens to be perhaps the oldest living profession, when you think that every must have been designed in a particular manner before it was invented.

When a designer opens a Design firm, it is a highly challenging situation. And in my opinion, I think it’s more challenging than any other tech startup. Well you may ask why?

To start of with, as an entrepreneur you are constantly doing everything else but Design! Yes, sad but true. So one day you are doing Marketing and Sales and the other day you are writing up proposals. Things you had thought was the job of Managers only. And not to forget what technical writers are meant for, you end up doing that as well. You grow your networking and improve your networking and people skills. You attend gatherings of other entrepreneurs, inspire each other and then find the next gathering and its location.

In the hustle- bustle of all this, Design as an Activity takes back stage. You tend to think that since you are in the Design Profession, you will end up doing good Design (a noun here) any day, no matter how long you do not do it. However, i think that is not true. Design is a process that has to be practiced. One needs to keep doing it from time to time. This can be in the form of simple doodles, sketches, diagrams etc to full fledged design solutions.

Therefore any Designer in a situation like me, should make it a point to realize that they are a Designer first. Design as an activity, thus has to be their forte and the person need to Design things. The biggest advantage of this is that the designer remains creative, is full with fresh creative juices, and only then can he/she lay the pillars for a “Design” firm.

I recently came across this article in the Pratt’s institute magazine. Its called “Design: A Green Collar Job” by Debera Johnson. We as designers are responsible for the creation of the products, clothings, publications, advertisements, buildings, interiors, information systems etc.
The list is huge.

Each of us are to play a vital role in the society. One of the most hot topics of conferences happens to be about saving the planet. So there are conferences on Global Warming, climate change and also it also gets a mention in other design conferences like CHI and TED.

One thing that I have noticed is the lack of participation from the Indian Design Industry on the topic of Sustainability. India, I feel is witnessing the changes that the western world witnessed quite some years back. As we continuously strive to creating better systems, and all things for a better lifestyle, each of
us play a vital role. As the world becomes more complex, and unordered, it will look to designers to find solutions. With the economic progress that our beloved country is making on many grounds, it is but high time that we start thinking Green on a much larger scale and not just confined to the metros and the big offices.

I am wondering if there is any such data for India, as done by Photographer Chris Jordan’s “Running the Number” series. Some of them strikes you in the face. For Example, In the US, there are two million plastic beverages are discarded every five minutes. And this, one million plastic cups are used on airline flights in the US every six hours.

With the increase in the affluent middle class in India, the changing cultures and also a lack of proper system for many things, the days ahead do seem to worry many.

In another article that I read, sustainability is based on the three R’s. Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. I believe we as Indians are good in at-least one of these R’s.
Reusing. Remember you having to wear the same clothes that your brother / sister wore when he/she was the same age. Also the same bottles being re-used in journeys to avoid buying new bottles of water? There is no place in India, where you would not see reuse of artifacts. It’s there in homes, in shops, and on the streets. I did capture a lot of them while doing photography in India. The rich tradition of handicrafts and using natural products, has indeed been a good component to thinking Recycling ways, but that just is not enough.

In the school (HCID program) where I go, there is a strong research group on Sustainability and people have been indeed bringing up points that are indeed a concern to the world today. One of the things I was talking there was the sustainability in the developing nations and what better than India. I am sure and confident that designers can create a bigger impact in the industry than it already is.

Take the example of the earthen tea pots. The are environment friendly, are cost effective, gives a nice cultural experience. Embedded deeply within our culture are numerous examples of sustainable solutions.

I would love to get in touch with Indian Designers looking at Sustainability in an Indian context and work more closely towards some research on this.

I have always considered myself a realist. As mentioned earlier, I have been inspired by Bresson, who is considered to be the father of Photojournalism (which I believe will always remain an example of realism) and is the inventor of the term “the decisive moment” in photography.

Bresson mentions in his books and in interviews that it was never the photography that he was passionate about. What interested him was life as it unfolded to him. His photography was an attempt to capture the experiences over time; in a fraction of a second, of the lifeworld as experienced by him.

“For me the camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to “give a meaning” to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry – it is by great economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression. One must always take photographs with the respect for the subject and for oneself. “

He goes on to say this,
“I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung up and ready to pounce, determined to “trap” life- to preserve life in act of living. Above all I craved to seize, in the confines of one single photograph, the whole essence of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.”

It is not completely evident whether Bresson adopted a very phenomenological approach to clicking his photographs or a structuralist one. When he talks about the composition it almost appears that there is the structuralist approach, whereas when he talks about the entire experience that he wishes to capture in the photograph, it is a phenomenological approach.

There are far more challenges being a realist, as a photographer than a film maker. With a photograph (and I am not talking about a photo-story comprised of multiple photographs) you have to create a story out of that situation you are in and in which you had an embodied interaction; to the outside world. Then you leave it for interpretation to the viewer. This is another difficult part. It is just one photograph. There is no music to lay the emphasis and neither any cut shots. There is no timeline and no other cues in the later frames to lay significance to a particular metaphor used in the frame. Thus in this frame it is equally challenging to know what signifier to not put in the frame. To do photography based in realism, is all the more challenging as the real world is changing all the time. The challenge is to perceive this reality, almost simultaneously recording in the sketchbook (camera).

Another misconception that I generally had was that Realism always meant something that was in black and white. While on one hand it is true that it prohibits us from seeing the distractions and that the essence of a composition (be it of a real life as Bresson , or of the real Nature as Ansel Adams would like to) is brought about only when looking at the images in its Black and White form.

I have nothing against color photography, and perhaps I do propagate the usage of it when necessary. Bresson however himself was not too inclined towards using color.
He mentions:
“I am half afraid that this complex new element may tend to prejudice the achievement of life and movement which is often caught by black and white.”

I do think that realism is not in the medium of the black and white or the color. As, how can one think in black and white, when they are viewing the world in its true color. Its kind of a paradox, of having to deliberately having a mismatch in the real and the perception. It is just that the interpretation of the cultural expression changes.

In order to illustrate the point above, while in the black and white one, my focus is on the abandoned house and a photographer on an abandoned path; which is situated in a hilly area. My interpretation says that the photographer is perhaps lost or is going to unfamiliar territories.
This same artifact when viewed in color, creates a different impression. Apart from the above, the presence of the color enhances the other things like essence of nature, the time of the day, the season of the year and hence results in a more complete understanding of the situation.

My understanding of reality in both these situations seems to be different, even though the subject is the same.

I am not propagating that Realism (in color or in b/w) is good or bad. In the end its all about the technique. Technique is important insofar as one must master it in order to communicate what one sees. Thus in the case of Bresson, it happened to be those decisive moments. In the case of Kieslowski it was the longing and the grief which he was trying to convey.