Photo exhibition of Prabhat’s work in Tel Aviv, 28th April till 5th May 2016. Introduction by Nayana.
Prabhat (Nimrod Getter) has a huge collection of exquisite photographs. For years his friends have been trying to get him to exhibit his work. He had never seen the need, or had the drive. But now, by a strange confluence of circumstances, the time has come. Here a selection:
Prabhat takes extraordinary photographs of ordinary people. Over the years (many of them!) he and I spent a lot of time together, in a lot of places. Fellow travellers. Many a times I was at his side when he was taking photographs. I often took a photo of the same scene. My shot was nice enough, but his was illuminating. It brings light. It is a sharing of presence. Hard to put into words.
Whatever he is doing, wherever he goes, he has his camera with him. His photos include friends and strangers, the exotic and mundane. The streets of his hometown, Tel Aviv, or a Tibetan tailor in Lhasa. His profession is that of a lighting director in movies, so in the exhibition we see intimate shots of famous faces hanging beside laughing street boys in Turkey.
The exhibition’s layout is a meditative journey. An invitation to see. The mind wants to know – who where when -, rises up to grasp and package. The image says: Is that so?
The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbours as one living a pure life.
A beautiful girl, whose parents owned a food store lived near him. When her parents discovered she was with child they were angry.
She refused to name the father, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.
Furious, the parents went to the master declaring he was the father. “Is that so?” was all he would say.
After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbours and everything else he needed.
A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fish market.
The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask forgiveness, and ask for the child back.
In yielding the child, all Hakuin said was: “Is that so?”
See more photos shown at the exhibition on Prabhat’s website: www.nimrodgetter.com – photo prints are available for purchase, including a book.
Nimrod Getter became Swami Anand Prabhat on Christmas day of 1975 after he stumbled into the ashram in Pune through a chain of coincidences too bizarre to be mildly believable. By then he had already worked on a few films and was thinking of making his own films, but the next ten years were spent very close to Osho. He worked in Mariam Canteen and in the Theatre Group, sometimes took photos of Osho until he moved to Oregon. Together with others, he continued to take photos alongside all the other duties. When Rajneeshpuram was no more, Prabhat went back to working in motion pictures. He would work intensively for as long as it took to complete a movie and then disappear and travel to the remotest corners until the money lasted, and again go back to work.
The current exhibition is of 40 years of looking at the world without judgment and with a great sense gratefulness for being so very lucky.
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