Caribbean Beat — 25th Anniversary Edition — March/April 2017 (#144)

“If Trinidad has a soul, the place to hear it is in Mungal Patasar’s music.” Thus did writer Niala
Maharaj begin her story on the renowned Trinidadian sitarist in our November/December
2000 issue. And her incisive profile was complemented by photographer Mark Lyndersay’s
portrait of Patasar on the cover. A prolific contributor of both images and words to Caribbean
Beat over the decades (with nine covers to his credit), Lyndersay recalls that photoshoot at
Patasar’s house nearly seventeen years ago:
46 • Mungal Patasar on
the sitar
November/December 2000
Photo by Mark Lyndersay
Every photographer on assignment for a
magazine wants the cover. It’s prime space and
usually pays the best, but a portrait session can
go off the rails if there isn’t a good, balanced
range of images for the publication’s designer
to work with. That means putting effort into
making every setup as compelling as possible,
while thinking about how they play together to
offer their own visual narrative in the final piece.
Ideally, the photographs complement
the words in a profile. Sometimes they tell a
parallel but unrelated story. At worst, they exist in a different world from the
words. The cover photo has work to do. It is a preview of the issue’s tone and
content, a sales pitch to the potential reader, and an invitation to read the
story it references.
My first preference with a subject is almost always an environmental
portrait. If it can happen effectively in the subject’s space, they begin with
the advantage of home ground in the encounter. The Mungal Patasar session
happened at his home. The musician lives in the countryside, and I imagined
great possibilities. I photographed him in his
living room with his family and, with time
running out, in a nearby field seated with his
sitar under a tree.
But it was the portrait taken just a few
inches from the front door of his home
— a heavy, weathered slab of wood with
just enough texture and muted tone to
complement the musician and his well-used
instrument — that ended up leading the issue.
After some broad direction about posture,
Mungal began to play. I wish I could say I
was an appreciative audience, but I had one
roll of 120 Fujichrome 50 allocated for this
shot, twelve frames on the Hasselblad I was
using, and I needed to bracket exposures.
Mungal just played on, doing his work
while I did mine, a portrait more passionately
given than taken.
47 • Carnival rainbow
January/February 2001
Photo by Sean Drakes
48 • Water lily
March/April 2001
Photo by Sean Drakes
49 • Bob Marley
May/June 2001
Photo by Adrian Boot
50th issue
July/August 2001
Illustration by Russel Halfhide
51 • Seashells
September/October 2001
Photo by Sean Drakes
52 • Shake the maracas
November/December 2001
Illustration by Tonia St Cyr
53 • Carnival time again
January/February 2002
Photo by Sean Drakes
Our twenty-odd Carnival
cover subjects have
included sequined
pretty mas, calypso and
soca stars, traditional
characters like the blue
devil and Dame Lorraine.
Mas is one of the hardest
subjects to capture in a
single image: it’s chaotic,
it’s unpredictable, it moves
too fast.
50 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM