The beat of his heart
Ishara Jayawardane
 "And you, Alexander, sleepless in the dead of night:
Where do your eyes roam?
Where does your heart wander?
Yours is a quest for far off lands
Where the constellations set
Where the last waves of the ocean die..........."
- Alexander, Valerio Massimo Manfredi
He surveyed the East African coast with is bright blue eyes. The hot
sand between his toes. The saltiness of the air pervading his lungs. Far
away he spotted the Dhows and a slow smile spreads across his crinkled
face. Beat Presser is an adventurer and a photographer and always will
be. He had the charisma of an actor and anyone meeting him for the first
time would see a faint resemblance to Robert Redford. He is Swiss and he
spends six months in Switzerland and the rest of the year he travels
through the world. And once not long ago he was in East Africa. Beat
Presser had seen many incorrect things in the world but he also saw a
certain beauty that he captured with the lenses of his camera.
Old age can slowly creep up on a man and Beat was no stranger to
that, but his blood was warm and his heart still pounded with excitement
when he saw a potential photograph.
"If you work with Black and White you have the possibility to develop
the film yourself and do the printing yourself, so you have much better
control over the work. Black and White photography is a very old skill
and I like to keep that skill alive. If you photograph in black and
white it is an abstraction of the reality. So I find it a very
interesting way to express myself. Black and White makes the photographs
very rich," said Beat Presser.
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Beat
Presser |
Beat Presser walked along the East African coast and remembered a
time far off when he was a 15-year old lad in a dark room. If one were
to look down from heaven that day they would have seen a halo appear
over Beat's head, because that day his destiny was made. He was invited
to the dark room by a friend of his he saw how a photograph became a
photograph and he enjoyed that moment.
And in that moment he decided he wanted to become a photographer. "I
knew if I became successful in my profession then I could make a living.
With photography I could live a unique and a very interesting life.
Photography is a very good way to express yourself. It is like a
language photography and I can tell stories with that," stated Beat.
Looking at the ocean Beat remembered his dreams as a young man: to
sail across the endless ocean and see Buddhist monasteries and the
mighty pyramids. "The world is a delicate situation to many things go
wrong and we don't have leaders with vision. Why do we have wars? So
many things that are incorrect? I see many things which are not correct.
But as a photographer I like to show the other way around. I like to
show the beauty of life. Rather than show a polluted sea I'd like to
show people sailing," explained Beat.
Sitting in front of me at the Barefoot gallery, I asked Beat what he
thought about Sri Lanka. "I always enjoy being here. I have always been
very well treated here. I was always welcome.
"This exhibition is about the Dhows. The sailing vessels which are
sailing around the Indian Ocean. This is a way of transporting people
and goods the way it has been done for thousands and thousands of years.
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Presser’s
paintings |
We don't really know how old this trade is. The first mention of
scriptures about the Dhows is 6000 years ago by Egyptians, but it must
be much older. It is a very beautiful trade. It is a wonderful way to
see the world. Silent and peaceful," said Beat. Having been to East
Africa Beat feels it is a region of possibilities and problems like
droughts and malnutrition.
There are very nice people. "I've really enjoyed my time with all
these trips. When I was 19 I first went to Dar es Salaam I was
travelling on a boat across the Indian Ocean to India, it was my first
time on the Indian Ocean I went back several times to East Africa,"
added Beat.
My next question was what made a 19 Year old young man go all the way
across the world to East Africa when most 19 year olds are either
clubbing or chasing a skirt? "Curiosity. I was travelling around the
world when I was 19 because I wanted to see first hand what the world
looks like. That was very interesting for me," concluded Beat. The last
rays of the departing sun leave the barefoot gallery and Beat and I part
company. Beat leaves the gallery to wherever his heart takes him. East
Africa or some other distant land.
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