Member Since January 26th, 2010
Photo Impressionism
STATEMENT
My photographic philosophy is simple. I photograph subjects that trigger a response in me—either visually or emotionally. As I get drawn into a theme, I attempt to capture or isolate the essence of the subject in terms of movement, form, color and light. The human element is particularly a stong attraction to my senses.
Print-making is a very integral part of my process. Since the camera lens does not see the same way as the human brain, I spend much time in digitally reworking my pieces to convey moods and feelings. I make archival prints with pigment inks on fine art photographic paper or stretched canvas so as to enhance the original colors and textures.
In the end, my pictures must speak for themselves.
BIOGRAPHY
In Suresh Shivdasani's perfect world, every day would be a snow day.
"I used to be engineer in San Francisco," says the Bombay-born photographer-entrepreneur. "I used to go to Sun Valley" – the seminal Idaho ski resort – "every year and ski for a week, have a great time, spend all my money, and then start working again for another 50 weeks until I could go again. And I said there's got to be a better way." Always interested in photography, he recalls sitting with his engineering buddies at Sun Valley 35 years ago and saying, “Wouldn't it be great if I could live up here and pursue my passions every day, and make some money and take summers off to travel?' And they all looked at me and said, 'You're nuts.'”
Shivdasani's stroke of genius was devising a way to produce poster-sized blow-ups of photos shot on the mountain with a small 35mm camera rather than a bulky medium-format, and inventing a customized developer to produce prints quickly and plentifully. His first such business grew from Sun Valley to encompass four branches around the U.S. and Europe, at Aspen, Snowbird, Keystone, and St. Moritz.
"In the late '60 and early '70s," explains the Stanford-educated Shivdasani, who holds a bachelor's degree in physics and a master's in aeronautical engineering, "Ilford and Kodak made what looks like inkjet printers except it had two little tanks of photo developer and stabilizer." The device could semi-automatically make black-and-white prints up to 24 inches wide. "The big thing with travelers in those days was to get souvenier posters from where they'd been and display them in their homes. I said to myself that if I could take skiers' pictures on the mountain and offer them a poster at a reasonable price, with the Sun Valley logo on it, I could make a living at it." He modified fast-acting x-ray developing chemical with softening agents "and got great results. I tested it at home, drove up to Sun Valley, and they thought it was great idea. They gave me a little darkroom and a couple of ski passes."
Shivdasani's since trained an army of assistants over the years in a technique that in a different context might have made him Ray Kroc or Colonel Sanders.
"I love photography and I love the technical side of it. I applied engineering principles and analyzed even the creative ends of photography. One day I was at an art gallery and wondered, 'How is it that can I look at this on the wall and know it's a Rembrandt, or an Ansel Adams?' That's when I realized all these artists had a certain techniques that was common in all their pictures. If that is so, if it's a technique, then I should be able to analyze it, take it apart, and to teach anyone. I used to get into a lot of arguments with artists when I would say it's all technique. Then one day I read that the ancient Greek word for art is 'techni,'" which indeed refers to everything from the art of painting to the arts of glassblowing or stonemasonry. "That's when I knew it had something."
He quickly learned not to hire trained, professional photographers. "They would argue that I was breaking all the rules, which is true, because I never knew the rules. It was heresy to them that maybe we were inventing new rules that worked in this particular situation. Off the mountain Shivdasani himself has shot the masters-of-the-universe Allen and Company Media and Digital Technology conference since its start in Sun Valley in 1983, shooting portraits of the CEOs of Microsoft, Disney, Coca-Cola and Time Warner and the like. He's additionally shot famous individuals ranging from President Gerald Ford, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Arnold Swartznegger, to Senator John Kerry and Theresa Heinz.
Today, he has sold all of his operations in order to semi-retire with his wife in Layton, Utah. He spends his time traveling to his home country, India and other places to pursue the Fine Art area of digital photography. He also leads photography workshops to India where his knowledge of the culture and language is a decided advantage.