About...the artist

OK, SO CLASHIO BARBARANI is not quite my real name, but it is a kind of collage of my given names, including the namesake of an aunt I never knew. She would surely have understood my work, for in her brief life, she created many beautiful and intricate designs. This name reflects also my relationship with conventional ’good taste’: I am an unrepentant barbarian when it comes to vibrant colour, abundant pattern and visual complexity. There is more than enough chillingly life-denying decorative and chromatic austerity in the world. I am an unrepetentant maximalist. I take these photographs on simple compact digital cameras, transforming the raw image a lot, a little, or not at all in Photoshop and/or iPhoto. The process of transformation is often more or less random, but I know when I have found what I am looking for – often several different variations of it. The way these new visions suddenly emerge as I play with the controls feels magical, alchemical, and very much part of the joy and wonder I derive from these snapshots of the world.  I spend most of my time in South Asia, the remainder in South-East Asia and northern Europe – a fact reflected by the content of the pictures. India, above all, affords on a daily basis the sense of wonder and amazement at the world that I love, and seek to convey to others through these images. If you have enjoyed the colour in the architecture and sculptural series in particular, and/or the complex patterns in some of the photographs, you might also like my painted mandalas, in which colour and pattern are combined in highly intricate designs intended for meditation and healing. These are visible at mandalascapes.com