STUDIO TIMES IMAGE ARCHIVE

STUDIO TIMES IMAGE ARCHIVE

Having spent over forty years travelling the many roads and jungle paths of their Island home, the photographic team of Studio Times Ltd spearheaded by Nihal Fernando have built up an enormous Archive of Images of Sri Lanka. The natural landscape in all its beauty, the archaeological heritage and the people, their culture and way of life, from the Miocene site of Minihagalkanda which was inhabited by ancient man 300,000 years ago to Mihintale, the birthplace of Buddhism, the kovils of Polonnaruwa, the Dutch Fort of Galle and the sky line of Colombo city – the Image Archive of Studio Times is one that is constantly updated by its team of photographers, Anu Weerasuriya, Christopher Silva, Roshan Perret and Ben Samarasinghe.

To search for an image/s, please select the previous years too as the photograph/s you are interested in may have been uploaded sometime ago and may not be picked up on the search.

STUDIO TIMES BULLETIN - DEC 2015

STUDIO TIMES BULLETIN - NOVEMBER 2015

The Black & White Image is of the Image House at Medirigiriya (Nihal Fernando)

STUDIO TIMES BULLETIN - OCTOBER 2015

STUDIO TIMES BULLETIN - SEPT 2015

STUDIO TIMES BULLETIN - AUGUST 2015

STUDIO TIMES BULLETIN-JULY 2015

STUDIO TIMES BULLETIN-JUNE 2015

NIHAL FERNANDO

Nihal Fernando Meticulous gatherer of a nation’s heartbeat

• By  Malinda Seneviratne
• Saturday, 25 April 2015 00:00

Nihal Fernando

Somewhere in the middle of the year 1995 I received a letter.  I was a student in a university in Upstate New York at the time.  I knew the name of the author.  I knew his face.  I didn’t expect a letter from him and if anyone had asked me ‘What would Nihal Fernando have to say to you?’ I would have had to say ‘I have no idea!’

I had first seen him ten years before.  This was at the Lionel Wendt Gallery which hosted the exhibition ‘The Wild, The Free, The Beautiful’.  I had always been fascinated by the beauty of my country, its diversity, its people, places, history, culture and heritage.  Nihal Fernando had captured the essence of all that.  It was not a one-off exhibition.  It was the life work of someone who loved this land arguably as much as anyone did or more.  It was ‘work’ that continued for two more decades.  Age and illness stopped him, as it stops us all sooner or later, but Nihal Fernando’s heart never stopped.  He loved to the end.

That letter had nothing to do with photography.  It had everything to do with love. It was a short letter, hand-written.  The essence is as follows: ‘I was told that you can write.  We are trying to stop the sale and ruination of the Eppawala Phosphate deposits. Help us.’  He gave references. He detailed the issue.  He was in the forefront of an authentically citizens’ movement that went against the most powerful individuals and entities in the country.  They were not part of the rent-a-protest mob that calls itself ‘civil society’ but by and large does little more than make money off people’s miseries.  They were honorable citizens; they didn’t wave flag or make a fuss about nation and nationality but nevertheless were truer patriots than those chest-beating groups who use that tag.  They won the day.

That was when I first got a flavor of the passion that had driven this incredible human being.  It is as though his entire being, every cell and every thought, was infused with love for this country and its people.  It was soft sentiment, through and through, and this is shown in the incredible patience that is so obviously an integral part of his work.  That and a tirelessness to explore every corner of this blessed land.

I visited him at his house down Skelton Road several times thereafter. Almost ten years after he sent me that letter ‘Uncle Nihal’ proposed that I help him with a new project.  I was working at the Sunday Island at the time.  He gave me a bunch of beautiful black and white photographs.  He also loaned me a copy of D.S. Senanayake’s ‘Agriculture and Patriotism’.  He had picked out paragraphs and marked the photos that should go with each.

So for the next year or so we did just that.  Under the title ‘Agriculture and Patriotism’ there would be a photograph with a quote from the book.  The observations and recommendations, I found, were valid more than half a century since they were first printed.  After a few weeks I added a comment to each quote by way of alluding to present-day policy preferences and their flaws.  He didn’t object.  He kept sending more pictures until we ran out of quotes and thereafter sent me other photographs to ‘do as I please’ with them.  He helped decorate those pages with so much affection, I remember.

I last met him a few months ago when I dropped by Studio Times next door.  When I inquired after him, his daughter Anu said ‘You can see him but be prepared to be shocked’.  He had deteriorated a lot, she said.  Uncle Nihal didn’t speak much.  I didn’t want to exhaust him so I didn’t stay too long.  But he was lucid in the short observations he offered to whatever I had to say.  His smile and his gaze had not aged, I noticed.  Something never do, I suppose.  Like everything he gave us in his long and eventful life, all the beauty, grace and eloquence in stone, light, personality and other physical and social architectures that he captured.

His intellect was as keen as his eye.  He was wise about all the many flaws of our political systems, structures of governance and of course the treachery of sections of the business community.  He said way back in 1986, ‘The fight to keep safe the wild, the free and the beautiful, even in this blessed land, has been long and hard fought – I for one have lost every skirmish’.

He had figured it all out: ‘They (whoever) employ a time-tested method.  First, they do their homework.  They study all the people, the NGOs, scientists and officials.  Then they offer subtle bribes such as trips abroad and consultancies.  Then they come up with a grand claim: “we have got consensus!”  At the end of us it’s a sell out that often includes changing our laws.’

He had once been invited for lunch at a five-star hotel by a World Bank official.  Nihal had said ‘I can’t afford it’.  The official had responded, ‘No, I will pay.’  Nihal’s answer, I recorded ten years ago as ‘a classic in that it contains the essence of the political economy that governs 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!’

Nevertheless, to him Sri Lanka was always ‘A land without sorrow’.  He would say this again and again ‘That’s what we are and how we should portray ourselves, a land without sorrow’.  In a way, even in this moment of sorrow when he’s left us forever, one realizes the truth of the claim.

Manik De Silva, Editor-in-Chief, Sunday Island, my first boss in the newspaper industry and mentor, offered a headline to an interview I had done with this amazing man: ‘Nihal Fernando: the Lanka lover behind the lens’.  Captured it all. 

http://www.nation.lk/edition/insight/item/40149-nihal-fernando-meticulous-gatherer-of-a-nation’s-heartbeat.html

NIHAL FERNANDO: HE TOLD THE STORY OF THIS COUNTRY & ITS PEOPLE HIS WAY

He told the story of this country and its people his way

Kala Korner by Dee Cee

Tribute to Nihal Fernando

View(s): 89

Barbara Sansoni wrote a beautiful piece on Nihal Fernando in ‘The Wild, The Free’, The Beautiful’. “What is this man with his small band of disciple photographers from Studio Times? His work tells us he is an explorer, a naturalist, endlessly patient and impervious to the discomfort of mosquitoes and heat, a sensuous man., passionate about beauty, but equally passionate for things wild, primitive and free, recording their images with great love, not for study, or commerce, or intellectualism or political use but in the only way artists act – spontaneously. Nihal Fernando is an artist, a great photographer.”

He was indeed!

“A man of few words Nihal always prefers to listen to what others say. When he does talk, his words are full of meaning. He is a keen observer, his photographs being the best testimony”. This is what I wrote a few years ago in Kala Korner after enjoying yet another Studio Times exhibition at the Lionel Wendt.

Nihal Fernando, passed away a few days ago.

The moment I heard the sad news (through an e-mail his daughter Anu sent me) my mind flashed back to the mid-1960s. That’s when I came to know Nihal and his mate, Pat Dekker. I was then with the Observer working in the news desk along with Manik de Silva, today’s senior-most active journalist. Those were the days the Observer was a popular evening daily, in addition to the Sunday edition. There were no mobile phones, no websites then to check on news flashes. We started work early and by 7 we had done our bit for the first edition of the paper and then virtually every morning we went to YMCA, Fort for breakfast. And there we invariably met Nihal and Pat who also came in early to open their office which was then housed in the Times building. After a good stringhopper feed we moved over to Studio Times for a chat. I was always with Manik and chief sub-editor Clarence Perera.

When I left Lake House and joined Levers, I had a lot to do with Studio Times. Levers’ advertising agency, Thompson Associates used Studio Times for Levers’ work. As Product Manager for toilet soaps, I had to work with the agency to prepare advertising and promotional material. Lux was then the ‘Beauty soap of filmstars’. We used popular local film stars for the Sinhala and Tamil ads. Photography was done either by Nihal or Pat.

My contact with them increased after joining Ceylon Tobacco (CTC).We used Studio Times exclusively for photographs for CTC publications. The Annual Report always carried a feature mainly on CTC activities that had diversified into other agriculture, apart from tobacco. I went all over, to Mahiyangana, Soragune off Haldumulla and to the H9 in the Mahaweli with either Nihal or Pat. Both being nature lovers, they enjoyed the work. Often we spent the night at CTC circuit bungalows in remote places particularly in the hill country. With field managers we would chat late into the night. At the crack of dawn we were out to catch pack-bulls bringing tobacco to the depots or to take photographs of farmers starting work.
Our professional association turned into a close friendship because both were fine human beings. In later years, after Studio Times moved to Skelton Road, Nihal and I would sit and discuss the tragedy surrounding the environment. He lamented over the destruction that was taking place and did whatever he could to arrest it.

Through the Studio Times publications, Nihal has left behind a treasure for generations to enjoy, learn, and absorb. As I write this column, ‘Handbook for the Ceylon Traveller’ is within my reach. I refer to it so often. I cherish the 1974 copy autographed by both Nihal and Pat.

The publications initiated by Nihal – ‘The Wild, The Free, The Beautiful’ (1986) to ‘Eloquence in Stone’ (2008) through’Sri Lanka: Immortal Isle’ (1997) with Luxmanan Nadaraja, ‘Sri Lanka: A Personal Odyssey, ‘ (1991) and ‘With the Dawn’ (2004) with text by Herbert Keuneman based on Wild Life’73 exhibition occupy a special place in my little library. What a treat they are!

“This is the dream I have had for the last fifteen years. I want to tell the story of this country and its people. I want to make people think about our past and what we are doing to it before it’s too late,” Nihal wrote in two lines in ‘Eloquence’. He had done just that for posterity.

The Sunday Times was always open to write about Nihal’s creative efforts. I preserve the Kala Korner columns through which I tried, in my own small way, to write about a talented individual.

As I write, I picture Nihal in his long-sleeved bush shirt and off white tussore trousers (I can’t remember ever seeing him in a short-sleeved shirt or bright coloured trousers) seated with me on the cane settee at the Studio having a chat. He was feeling quite free because daughter Anu had taken over the responsibility of running the firm.

We have lost yet another gifted professional, genuine environmentalist, devoted family man and fine human being.
I shall never forget such a wonderful individual.

http://www.sundaytimes.lk/150426/plus/he-told-the-story-of-this-country-and-its-people-his-way-145871.html
Sunday Times, April 26, 2015

STUDIO TIMES BULLETIN - MAY 2015

STUDIO TIMES BULLETIN - APRIL 2015

STUDIO TIMES BULLETIN - MARCH 2015

Batticaloa Fort

STUDIO TIMES BULLETIN - FEBRUARY 2015

St. Stephen's Church, Negombo

STUDIO TIMES BULLETIN-JANUARY 2015

Slave Island from the Galle Face Esplanade. 

From Scenery & Reminiscences of Ceylon by Prince John Deschamps, 1845