Bangalore, Feb 07: Bangalore is now home for this man whose camera lenses have captured vivid images of life in Europe.
Teaching the intricacies of photography as an art to college students here is what Hellmuth Conz is busy with now. He teaches at colleges such as Mount Carmel, Christ, and Garden City where students are captivated by his easy charm, and enthusiasm for photography.
Way back in the Sixties when he was studying photography in the still divided Germany, things were very different. "Black-and-white photography was less expensive than colour then, but now it is the other way around... there was no digital photography then," Hellmuth reminds us.
Getting a Masters degree in photography involved three years of study and an equal number of years of work in a professional studio. "You had to learn everything from darkroom work to preparing transparencies," he explains.
"Advertising photos can be creative too, if you can get over the rigid outlook of some agencies... I made a composition out of what was originally only a bottle of liquor by adding glasses and other objects around it... what was just a picture of a refrigerator was made more lively by filling the shelves with food and beverages. ," Hellmuth says. "It is not the camera that matters but the person behind it; whether it is a Nikon or an auto-focus, you can use your imagination and be quick and get wonderful photographs," he tells his students. He makes them actually work at it than give long lectures.
He shows an example of what a student who had never handled a camera before did. A typical scene on crowded Mahatma Gandhi Road: a woman riding a two-wheeler is bumped by some vehicles, and she falls down. Fortunately, she suffers no injuries. That and the scenes that followed, such as the argument between her and the driver of the other vehicle, the policeman on the scene, idle onlookers, all are captured on photos taken within seconds of one another.
Hellmuth had an unforgettable experience with a bearded old vagrant sitting on the pavement near the closed shutters of a shop. "The old man was impatient and did not want to be photographed... when he did let me, there was such a look of indifference combined with some hostility in his eyes; it shows in the picture," he says.
