Photography

Sunder was an avid but inconsistent photographer. Like many (certainly Indian) men of his generation, he loved the hardware and bought lots of fancy gadgetry, but did not always have the patience to use it. His first foray into photography was in 1979-80, shortly after he had been posted to Washington D.C. on deputation to the Indian embassy. He bought a state-of-the-art Canon with a variety of accoutrements: wide angle and telephoto lenses, multiple kinds of polarizing filters, the works. He also played with these over the next couple of years, and took hundreds of photographs between 1980 and 1982, while in Washington. Once he returned to India however, his equipment and interest in photography were mostly put in storage for a couple of decades. He went back to photography only in the 2000s, after the world had entered the digital age.

As with everything else, Sunder’s photography was marked with precision and patience. He would take forever to take a scene, making sure that everything was just right before he clicked. This would drive human subjects to exasperation; his real strength was in photographing still life. He especially enjoyed photographing flowers, and enjoyed gardens very much. The photos we have uploaded thus far are from March 2014, when we went to the Chicago Botanical Gardens. The photo at the top of the page was one (of many) that he took at the Chinese Scholar’s garden in Staten Island Botanical Garden, which we visited with our friends, the Guta-Casales in 2010.

Sunder was very happy when Kaushik took to photography as a serious hobby, and indulged his delight in gadgetry by buying Kaushik some wonderful new lenses just weeks before he passed.