NIHAL FERNANDO: Journey and Legacy

by Malinda Seneviratne

The wild, the free, the beautiful. Serendip to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka: A Personal Odyssey. Voyage. With the Dawn. The Rajarata. Eloquence in Stone. Lovely words. They obviously refer to someone who has travelled much and in travelling opted to make the roads and pathways as slow as required by a compulsion to stop, gaze, embrace and digest surroundings, ways of life and their immemorial back stories. These lines, in a way, describe the individual. Nihal Fernando.

Nihal Fernando (1927-2015), one might say, was all about photography. An earlier generation might remember him as a press photographer of the Times Group of newspapers. Those who know him as the owner of Studio Times, which he purchased in 1963, would know that he ventured into portraits as well as advertising and commercial photography. With regard to his entire corpus of photographs, history will no doubt mark him among the most outstanding photographers who dedicated themselves to capturing Sri Lanka’s innumerable wonders. He saw people, places, work, history, archaeology and many other things that few have seen, fewer still have found wonderment in and even less who captured these as part of personal odysseys with an equal fervour share with fellow citizens.

In 2001, when I was working at the Sunday Island, the editor, Manik de Silva, wanted me to interview Nihal Fernando. I did and duly submitted the copy. Manik gave the headline: ‘Nihal Fernando: the Lanka lover behind the lens.’

Manik was spot on. Nihal Fernando was not just a photographer. He loved this land and was an activist who worked tirelessly to protect the country’s environment who campaigned to ban mechanised logging in the Kanneliya and Sinharaja rain forests. He was involved in public interest litigation related to the Intellectual Property Bill and the Water Reforms Bill. He also led the movement against open-cast mining at Eppawela by a multi-national company and helped secure a landmark judgment in this regard from the Supreme Court.

Not all of his activism and patriotism made it to the newspapers. On one occasion he gave me his copy of D S Senanayake’s ‘Agriculture and Patriotism.’ He had selected various paragraphs and had picked appropriate black and white photographs to go with each of them. They spoke to agrarian issues yet unresolved, more than half a century after the book was first published and 46 years, after he published ‘A Handbook for the Ceylon Farmer.’ He knew the land. He knew its political economy.

Once I asked him to select a picture that best represented his convictions. He gave the one that was carried in the Eppawala poster. It had the following caption: “ape paduwe inna denna” (LEAVE US ALONE!”). At the time, I wrote the following: ‘I believe it captures more than an appropriate slogan for a particular struggle, but is the defining political line that can bring us true independence.’ I also recounted the following:

‘Once a World Bank official had invited Nihal to lunch at a five-star hotel. Nihal had said “I can’t afford it.” The official had said “No, I will pay.” Nihal’s answer is a classic in that it contains the essence of the political economy governing our lives, the threat and the answer to everything that seeks to destroy our way of life and our heritage: “No, you don’t understand, I am paying!”’ Another anecdote worth repeating is how Nihal, when asked by a friend, “Why are you in such a hurry to shoot these photos?,” responded: “My eyes are not what they used to be. And many of the places I photograph would be gone before very long.”

So, when we speak of Nihal Fernando, his journey and legacy, we need a lot more than half a page in a newspaper. He, however, chose photography as a shorthand that was as or more effective. His canvas is too large and carries far too many elements to be digested through casual perusal. Nevertheless, I cannot think of a better entry point to further explore (be consequently be mesmerized by) this island that he so loved and fought to protect. ‘Nihal Fernando: Journey and Legacy,’ an exhibition with the rider ‘Exploring connections through shared perspectives,’ would be an excellent place to begin what could become a fulfilling lifelong exploration of the wild, the free, the wonderful.

His son, Yohan Weerasuriya, elaborated on what it was all about.

‘First of all, it is to honour Nihal Fernando. Secondly, it seeks to promote lesser known artists, photographers and sculptors. It seeks to educate. Finally, the proceeds will be channeled to develop the butterfly garden at the Colombo Cathedral as a living memorial, and to encourage and train young artists.’

The exhibition, to be held at the Barefoot Gallery, Colombo, from the January 31 to February 6, 2025, will feature 40 of Nihal Fernando’s photographs, 10 of photographers who have been part of the Studio Times story, and 70 exhibits (photographs, paintings and sculptures) by artists who have been inspired one way or the other by the life and work of Nihal Fernando.

Pat Decker, Maxie Decker, Mithra Weerakone, Luxshmanan Nadaraja, Dominic Sansoni and Charitha Pelpola are well known. Nihal Fernando worked with them, nurtured some of them and delighted in the successes they achieved in their individual professional journeys. The exhibition will also feature several emerging and contemporary artists, photographers and sculptors Asela Abeywardene, Channa Ekanayake, Sumudu Ellepola, Chandika Gunasekara, Nimalasiri Jayasena, Hiranya Malwatta, Salome Nanayakkara, Thisaru Prabashwara, Ruwan Prasanga,, Kavindu Sathsara, Kasun de Silva, Charlene Thuring, Sarinda Unamboowe, Shane Walgama and Karunasiri Wijesinghe.

All the Studio Times photographers featured in the exhibition, as well as Dominic Sansoni and Sarinda Unamboowe, have apparently travelled with Nihal Fernando. Yohan mentioned that in the 1990s Channa Ekanayake would borrow prints from the Studio Times files ‘and paint his beautiful drawings of village houses, more of which he has painted for the current exhibition.’

They exhibition press release adds:

‘Kasun de Silva is an explorer and seeker of remote sites as was Nihal Fernando. Ruwan Prasanga has produced sculptured stone fragments inspired by the cave art of Kurullangala. An emerging artist, Sumudu Ellepolla, has sketched her own interpretation of the trees of Maratenne photograph of Nihal Fernando which is published in his book ‘The Wild, the Free, the Beautiful.’ Contemporary artist Kavindu Sathsara has used Nihal Fernando’s photographs of village faces to create wonderfully evocative artworks. Chandika Gunasekara seems to have been inspired by Nihal Fernando’s love to travel on village roads during GNW (‘Gaenu Naana Welawa,’ the time that women bathe).’

The overall exercise is but an affirmation of Nihal Fernando’s lifelong commitment ‘to [support] the arts by holding exhibitions of Contemporary Art at the Studio Times premises, “to do something constructive and useful to encourage artists, however humble or difficult their circumstances or conditions in life, to place their work before genuine lovers and patrons of art and culture in an atmosphere free from disdain, discord and the dialectics of differing ‘schools,’ as mentioned in the Studio Times Exhibition Catalogue, 1965.

Little Grebe, Wilpattu by Nihal Fernando

Today, everyone with a smart phone is a photographer. Everyone with a data card can ‘publish’ or rather publicize photographs. Nihal Fernando did not have anything close to the kind of technological accessories that are commonplace today.

As Yohan pointed out, he didn’t have a big telephoto lens; the maximum was 400m. No auto focus. No vibrator reduction. No image stabilizers. And no adjusting after the shot. No photo editing. No props to enhance. Not a single digital image.

Kasun De Silva encountered Nihal Fernando or rather got acquainted with his work only around the year 2012. Kasun never got to meet the man who he now calls ‘my hero’ and who he believes still lives and will live for a long time to come through his work. Kasun, featured in the exhibition, said ‘it is an unexpected dream-come-true moment for me.’

‘That’s not because I got an opportunity to feature in an exhibition, but because I got the honor of featuring at the event in memory of my photography hero. I consider this as my chance of repaying for what I got from Nihal Fernando. In his book “Eloquence in Stone,” Nihal Fernando states, “all my work has been for the children of Lanka.” I think I’m one of those few children of Lanka who were fortunate enough to get something from his work. Now it’s my turn to repay.

Can we repay, ever, though? Perhaps we can try and only if we learn to love this land as he did, resolve to protect and nurture it as he did, and journey in ways that leave something close to the legacy he left behind. The ‘Lanka-lover behind the lens’ offers a pithy blueprint in his ‘A Personal Odyssey’: ‘I have tried to give something back for what I have received – the pleasure of being born in this Eden, once upon a time.’