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‘I’m a maverick photographer’

It all started with a Mamiya R267. The camera is what prompted photographer Nisha Kutty to take on a new brief — designing her own line of bags.

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It all started with a Mamiya R267. The camera is what prompted photographer Nisha Kutty to take on a new brief — designing her own line of bags.

That and a discerning eye for all things beautiful and glamorous. “Well, we Indians trend to stretch the term glamorous. It really should stand for something inaccessible and surreal, but yes in a sense my work has trained me to pick up the colours and textures in elements.” 

The graduate from JJ College of Art has apprenticed with fine art photographer Beat Pressler in Basel, Switzerland, and executed a flurry of prestigious projects that won her awards including a ranking as one of the top beauty photographers of New York. 

Be it the sheer strength of her blacks and whites or her portraits that cut across the conventional definition of beauty, Nisha is among the few Indian photographers to have created an impact on international terrain. “I’m a maverick photographer that way,” laughs Nisha.

So, how come she changed direction?. “The thought came to me when I was on the lookout for a good camera bag three years go —all I got were boring bags in black and brown.”  On one of her trips to Mumbai, Nisha had a bag designed in a funky combination of pink and red as well as a laptop bag in silver, white and orange. They were a hit with her friends in New York and orders for them poured in.

“I put my bags on eBay. and would you believe, they got sold as far as Russia, Germany and Italy,” she says.  

Just recently on the behest of good friend and designer Savio Jon, Nisha previewed her work at Zoya. The fact that she will now be staying in the city as her four-year-old daughter Surya is enrolled in a school here helped. “New York was alright up to a point,” she says.

“I guess Mumbai is a better place emotionally. Her husband Al-Khadir Rehman, who works as a re-toucher at O, Oprah’s magazine, is very supportive of her work. “I think people in Mumbai have become very style conscious. I wouldn’t say they’re as trendy as New Yorkers, but they’ll get there pretty soon,” she signs off.
t_ismat@dnaindia.net

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