KARACHI – Malcolm Hutcheson found himself growing up feeling a responsibility to understand as much as he could about the big topic, that is, life.
It is, therefore, not surprising that by the time he was eight, he was not managing to understand anything.
However, Hutcheson says, unbeknownst to him, many others had felt the same way and invented photography to solve this very problem.
“My first photograph was on a windy beach in the north of Scotland. Later, as years passed, I grew sad at all the beautiful things that I had known ceased to exist and decided that whenever possible, I would try to keep some of them with me,” he says.
He found himself in Pakistan where it seemed there were many beautiful things and they were being replaced with things of lesser beauty. “So I stayed to take photographs of what was not going to be there tomorrow,” he explains.
HOW HE WORKS: ‘Rooh khich’, translated from Punjabi as ‘spirit pulling’, refers to the way the photographer puts his hand inside the camera and pulls out the photograph.
The camera is just large enough to contain a focusing screen and two trays of photographic chemicals – a developer and a fixer.
This mini darkroom/camera combo allows an image to be shot on photographic paper and processed within two minutes.
Being able to judge the exposure by examining the negative is an important feature in a camera that has no shutter.
The lens comes from an old enlarger and the exposure time is between one and four seconds, which means all photographs are taken with the cooperation of the subject who has to remain as still as possible during the exposure.
