Walk of life

How does a photographer pay a tribute to the talent and memory of a friend, also a photographer? If he is 28-year-old Binu Bhaskar, an Indian living in Australia, he walks. And takes pictures. And has a huge installation in the home town of the friend who is no more. Acquainting the town with this friend's talent and paying him the ultimate tribute.

Bhaskar's "photographic pilgrimage" spanned nearly 600 kms and four months. He set out to walk through the Gippsland district of Victoria, southern Australia, in April 2000. He crossed hills and fields and towns in the chill of winter, temperatures plunging down to 8 degrees Celsius below zero and the wind bringing in freezing rain.

He walked with his trusted Nikon, tent, and backpack crammed with clothes and films, wearing his sturdy boots and a large, warm blanket holed off at the neck to form a poncho. And he averaged 20 kms a day. "Yes, it was cold. In the first week I was just hurting all the time. But after that I got used to it. Everything seemed possible then," he remembers.

Bhaskar is now in Dubai both to promote a friend's company and to do a mural for one of the city's shopping malls. He has a post-graduate diploma in illustrative photography from the Photography Studies College South Melbourne and photography remains his main passion and vocation. That is why when fellow-photographer and friend Jason Holmes passed away, he decided to create a "pictorial obituary".

He called his obituary-pilgrimage diksa, a Sanskrit word meaning initiation. "It was meant to be both a tribute to my friend and an initiation for myself, an initiation to self-awareness in harmony with nature," he explains.

His journey began at Coal Creek Heritage Village in Korumburra. His route took him through Mardan, Mirboo North, Boolarra, Yinnar, Gunyah, the Strzelecki Forest, Foster, Port Franklin, Welshpool, Port Albert, Yanakie, Fish Creek, Meeniyan, Dumbalk and Leongatha before he reached Toora, the little country town where his friend Jason was born.