Love fiction in freeze frame

GUWAHATI: If you want to witness a love story of a different kind - one that is told through 68 black-and-white photographs shot more than 40 years ago, and features a deceased Ulfa militant - troop to the State Art Gallery in the city. The exhibition, organized by Dibrugarh University Old Friends Association, will continue till September 13. Filmmaker Charu Kamal Hazarika opened 'Purbaraag - The Still Feature', a photo exhibition unique in many aspects, at the gallery on Monday. The photo feature tells a fictional love story through a series of B&W photographs featuring Hazarika's collegemates - music composer Nayanmoni Barua, Dipika Brahma and Budheswar Gogoi, one of the founder members of Ulfa.Hazarika is happy that the photographs and his novel idea have finally seen the light of day after 40 years. The photographs, which have been exhibited publically for the first time, were shot way back in 1972 with a Yashica camera equipped with an f.1.9-50-mm lens on manual mode. "The original roll was destroyed during the 2005 Mumbai floods, but, luckily, the images had been restored digitally before that. The photos on display are the scanned version of the original photographs, without any correction or editing. The captions were written by Subhash Deka," said Hazarika.Hazarika came up with the novel idea of telling the fictional love story - almost like a film in a still format - through photographs during his college days when the late Gogoi gave him a black-and-white roll and asked Hazarika to shoot him in various moods and get-ups. Hazarika and Gogoi were studying Dibrugarh University at that time. Gogoi, who was a few years senior to Hazarika, went on to become one of the founder members of Ulfa. He died of cancer in 1993.Gogoi's request was the trigger to Hazarika's idea. "I began thinking, why not link the photographs to tell a story, and thus the idea came alive. I approached a friend to write a love story set on the campus of Dibrugarh University. He wrote one on a love triangle and I decided to shoot a series of photographs to tell the story. I spoke to Gogoi about the idea and he agreed to play along," said Hazarika, a national award-wining film director. He then roped in his friends, Nayanmoni Barua and Dipika Brahma, to play the other two characters. The story of the love triangle is similar to many Bollywood potboilers set in the seventies. It involves two friends - Anil and Rajiv - whose friendship is put to the test when they fall for the same girl. But unlike Bollywood movies where one friend usually sacrificed his love for the other, here neither of them willing to give up their heart's desire. The two end up having an argument which leads to a scuffle, resulting in one of the friends backing out of the love triangle.The series of frames incorporate all the components of a motion feature film - prelude, montage, flashback, flash-forward and fight sequences. To make the photographic depiction attractive, Hazarika used a reflector made from a piece of cardboard. The captions beneath the images narrate the situation and reflect the moods of the characters.Hazarika has made three feature films, 100 documentaries, many short films and television serials in his career spanning 40 years. One of the 'actors' in the still film, Nayanmoni Barua, went on to become a music composer and is a recipient of two national awards. Hazarika tried to get in touch with Dipika Brahma, but he could not trace her.