Over the past year, Mr. Bhatia has criss-crossed the country, travelling from Chandigarh to Amristar, Bhopal, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi and Thiruvananthapuram before reaching Puducherry.

He was in the city for a photo exhibition themed ‘Le Corbusier in India, A Play of Light’, organised by Alliance Francaise of Pondicherry last week. In an interview with The Hindu , Mr. Bhatia stated that “Corbusier architecture is about imposing order on top of chaos.”

Using Leica with 50mm lens for his endeavour, he has followed the ‘arc of light’ to freeze the beauty of Chandigarh through his photographs. “I waited for the arc of light at different times of the day to see how it falls on the buildings. There was an interesting play of light and shadows on the buildings. This allowed me to plan the timing to photograph the architecture of Chandigarh,” he says.

Inspired by Le Corbusier’s book —‘Towards a New Architecture’, the photographer concentrated on the cubes, cones, spheres, cylinders and pyramids rather than entire buildings to showcase the work of Le Corbusier.

Mr. Bhatia, who left his catering business to take up photography, relies on creativity rather than automation in this digital era. “The camera has become a machine which takes photographs on its own and the human element is missing and the framing now is too hurried. The slowness required is missing and the camera is doing everything. When you rely on a machine to do everything, you are bound to make mistakes. I don’t think a machine can replace a human being. There is no satisfaction or creativity involved in that. Your eye and mind are far superior to your lens,” he asserts.