Visual Essay: Mayank Thammalla

The medium of photography is one of the most available art forms of our times. While once prohibitively expensive and specialized, for the past twenty years we have seen increasingly immediate access to image-making. Through our phones, with an instant dopamine hit of making, it’s easy to be swept up by the action of taking pictures–to take thousands without ever really practicing.

Travelling consistently, and shooting constantly, New Zealand architect and photographer Mayank Thammalla has trained his eye through exposure and experimentation, with a DSLR in hand, he has practiced. Though photography is not his trade, Thammalla has applied the visual rigour of his architectural studies to his compositions.

Emerging from a fascination with surrealism, which he has explored with figurative photo manipulations, his landscapes also reflect something of this sensibility; landscapes are partially obscured and shallow in focus, rendering them dream-like. In his work, he explains a drive to capture the metaphysical qualities of the landscape–the ways in which the real and concrete are experienced as atmosphere and emotion. Through a lens, the factual becomes subjective.

Cinematic and partly abstracted, his photographs underline the beauty of nature and where natural forms meet human-made structures, and clouds, mist and the ripples of water erode hard lines, softening the imposing grandeur of mountain peaks and stone. Thammalla takes time to consider composition and the hierarchy of subject, foreground and background, using depth of field to turn what could quickly become a travel documentary into narrative. 

Observing the canals of Venice, Thammalla writes: Nothing can be more real than this, the reflections painted by motion that exploded into millions of colours and formations. From looking up and out in the mountains of New Zealand, it’s on the waters of Venice’s canals that he turns down and to the inner world. Interiority has so often been symbolized in the history of art by depictions of distorted reflections–though more so in the human figure regarding themselves–here the painterly renditions of the sky and buildings above estrange the world around him. In this phenomenon, Thammalla sees reality questioning itself.

For too long ignoring the potential not only for manipulation but the subjectivity of a gaze, photography has been a medium synonymous with fact; imposing the idea of a singular objective truth, something already undone by the camera’s own parallax. Thammalla uses the photographic image to convey a spectrum of reality. Taking time to capture what is ethereal–the intangible attributes of physical space that evoke the emotional experience–the subjective, changeable truth. Seeing the photograph’s potential to record what is otherwise ineffable; ambience, the momentary resonance of a place.

A vibe.

You can see more of Mayank Thammalla’s work on his Format portfolio and by following him on Instagram.