The Hindu Business Line : Images of the soul

She created a sensation in Britain in the early 1990s. Today Pamela Singh (formerly Bordes) is older and wiser and her photographs are as stunning as the woman herself.

There is no hint of the turbulent times she went through as the first pinup of the `90s. Just over a decade ago people were calling her a modern-day Christine Keeler who almost brought down the British Government of Margaret Thatcher with her alleged liaisons with men in power.

But now all that is a distant past for Pamela Singh (formerly Bordes). Today, to use a cliché, she is older and wiser. The only exposure she has on her mind has to do with her camera. Her photographs speak volumes and there is nothing tentative about her work.

Recently she displayed her work titled `Faiyum-Angkor-Jaipur: Self Portraits that showcased the persona of the charismatic lady'. The exhibition documented a skilful presentation of art, technology and the imagination of an artist, all synchronised to create a lasting impression on the minds of viewers.

The first set of pictures titled Jaipur displayed an imaginative blend of art and technology — a superimposed Pamela resting on a jute bed among the locals or standing among villagers, wearing a traditional Rajasthani dress. Many of these portraits are also hand-painted.

"I wanted to create a 3D effect wherein I am a part of the scene and yet look distinct as an onlooker," she says in a note describing her innovative art.

In the next section titled Faiyum, Pamela has used the computer-powered paintbrush to give a different identity to the mysterious portraits of this ancient Egyptian town. With clever computer techniques, she has superimposed her own eyes, nose and lips in a past-meets-present endeavour.

"I went to the Apple Computers headquarters and that's where I was introduced to this technique wherein one fuses any part of one's body to another character. Once I learnt this art, I used it on the ancient Egyptian faces," she says.

Working on the 15 pictures was a grind. "To be exact, it took me three months of nine hours a day to make these pictures, some of which feature my eyes, my skin, my hand, my lips or my nose. That's why I call them the images of my soul. I have tried to strike a balance between the past and the present."

Sepia-tinted memories

If the stills from Jaipur and Faiyum take your breath away, the third section is the icing on the cake. Angkor is a collection of sepia-tinted pictures of the temples of Cambodia that Pamela took during 2000 and 2002. It's a show of beauty and belonging as the lenswoman skilfully marries her moods with the ancient architecture.

Her love affair with the lens started in an unusual way. She was interested in photography right from her boarding-school days in Jaipur. Her interest lay, not so much in taking pictures, as in developing them. Since she was very bright at chemistry, she would develop and print pictures for her friends. That's what got her started in the profession.

Pamela got her first camera at the age of 18 and life has never been the same ever since. Today, of course, her credentials span a wide area of experience — a stint in architecture at New York's Parson School of Design helped in instilling a sense of balance and composition and light and shade. Later, she attended classes at the International Center for Photography in New York.

But Pamela's real education came with her association with renowned names like Peter Beard, David Bailey, Ralph Gibson, Mirella Riccardi and Raghu Rai of India. "Each of these masters taught me the art in their own unique ways. And I was as keen a student as one could ever get," she says. Pamela was also a voracious reader of books on photography. There is hardly a great name in the profession with whose work she is not familiar — Cartier Bresson, Robert Capa, Eugene Smith, Tina Modotti, Edward Weston — she has read them all. She would pore over their works and see how they used the subtleties of light and shade, the right angles and editing techniques.

Over a period of 15 years, Pamela has made several journeys across the globe and has captured many memorable moments through her lenses. She also spent five years in Africa travelling along Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Somalia and Botswana, cataloguing wars, famines, genocides and sometimes even rare wildlife; either on foot or on UN relief planes, and sometimes even perched on trees.

Her hard work won global recognition when her photographs began appearing in international publications such as The Washington Post, The Telegraph, The Independent, Paris Match, Elle and Newsweek. Pamela also covered events for Reuters. She has done a special shoot for UNICEF on the effects of malnutrition and wars on children on the strife-torn continent of Africa.

Today, the prolific lenswoman has made the Pink City her base and has a studio there. After a rollercoaster life she is finally at peace with herself. "Whenever I am in the mood, I pack my bags and head for some exotic destination with a set of frames in my mind. I am enjoying my work and want to do it in a perfect way," she says.

Newsmen Features

Picture by Sandeep Saxena

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