In a different uniform...

Reel life

My Life is My Message is a photo-exhibition with a difference. For it contains shots taken not taken by any professional lensman but a ‘cop’.

Yes! Meet B S Shivaraju aka Cop Shiva who also dons the hat of a photographer and has now exhibited his works Art Heritage Gallery, Triveni Kala Sangam. The exhibition is on till
October 9.

Cop Shiva learnt photography so as to document events. Hailing from a village near Bangalore, he focuses on shooting people and ‘portraiture’ as a genre. But today he is fascinated with the idea of masquerade and the roles people play in public and private. Shiva continues to capture the diversity of humans who live on the edge, those who represent, most acutely, the spirit of our times.

In this exhibition Shiva presents two bodies of work – communicating the interplay of shifting identities in his subjects’ life – one real and the other fictional. The sense of duality reflects a split in the artist himself, as he moves between his vocation as a policeman by day and his passion for photography in leisure time.

This journey through life led Cop Shiva to two middleclass individuals – Basavaraju and Vidyasagar – who inhabit different worlds as part of their ‘normal’ daily routine, capturing the process of their transformations. 

This series have the photographs of Vidyasagar – a Bangalore resident who each day dresses up as Tamil film personality M G Ramachandran, changing his hair, his clothes and thereby his notion of self.

“My first reaction at meeting Vidyasagar was curiosity. What followed was a long relationship with him and his family. His life was like a living photo-performance and I wanted to get under the skin of this character through my camera.

My initial fascination became a passion to know Vidyasagar and his life. I always wondered about the reality behind the grease paint and his life-long passion to be MGR,” says Cop Shiva.