By Dr. Ravi Shankar, published on Medhum.org, USA.  Unni and I were talking about our undergraduate years and a batch photograph taken during our basic science days. Back then, mobile phones with cameras were absent; selfies were still in the future. The batch photograph brought together our teachers and our classmates in joyful harmony. Unni was telling me how he feared cameras and was absent for the group photo. He mentioned that it was an irony of life that someone who feared cameras then would later go on to start a photography museum. And not just one museum, but two. …

4 May , 2025  आवृत्ती २२: स्पर्श/ Edition 22: Touch https://hakara.in/unni-pulikkal/   This project, completed in 2007 in collaboration with American contemporary dancers Tom Evert and Susana Weingarten, captures the profound connection between a loving couple and the natural world. The photographs depict how these two responsive artists engage in a silent dialogue with various elements of nature, expressing their thoughts, feelings, and experiences and sharing the stories of their enduring love. As they perform, nature’s elements become listeners, collaborators, critics, and an emotionally responsive audience. Susana and Tom visited Kerala in 2007 for a performance in Thrissur. Although I had known them …

Kunal Ray, April 17, 2025, The Hindu Sunday Magazine Two museums in a town in Kerala are showing how conversations on art and photography can go beyond the urban elite.  On the map, Kodakara is a small, nondescript town in Kerala’s Thrissur district. At best, the famous Athirappilly waterfalls is located about 30 minutes from it. My interest, however, is piqued when I learn — through lens-based artist and writer S. Hariharan’s social media posts — about the existence of two art museums in close proximity to this town. They are noteworthy because not only are the two creating access and …

INDIA ART REVIEW MAGAZINE   July 18, 2021. Moss(Z)art is an attempt to recreate the abstract imagery I used to see in mind while listening to Mozart. The documentary, ‘Making of Moss(Z)art‘, which chronicles the production of the photo series has won the award at the Paris Film Festival 2021.   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music is highly organic. It is not musical notes alone; it is pregnant with life. It grows within us like an organism. It grows into flowering wines, singing birds, fluttering butterflies, and at times, it settles into the profound, resonating silence of the oceanic deep. As a creative expression of synesthesia, …

PRIYADERSHINI S.,  THE HINDU, KOCHI, MAY 26, 2020. A medical doctor and photographer, Unni Krishnan Pulikkal, pays a tribute to the COVID-19 victims of India through his current project: Zen Spots of the Fallen Leaves “Every picture of the fallen leaf is my tribute to the COVID-19 victims of my country. One leaf per person who lost the war with the virus but won the honor of the nation” says Unni Krishnan Pulikkal, a medical doctor and photographer, about his current project: Zen Spots of the Fallen Leaves: Tribute to the COVID Victims of India. Prior to the lockdown, Unni was …

By Seema Suresh/ August 2018/ Madhyamam Annual Edition 2018 അതൊരു  യാത്രയായിരുന്നു  … കാലാന്തരങ്ങളിലൂടേയുള്ള  യാത്ര … മുഖങ്ങളിൽ  നിന്ന്  മുഖങ്ങളിലേക്കുള്ള  യാത്ര …. പൂമ്പാറ്റകളെ തേടി ക്യാമെറയുമായ് കാട്ടിലേക്ക്  പോയൊരാൾ  എത്തി  ചേർന്നത്  ആദിവാസി ഊരിലേക്കായിരുന്നു … ഡോക്ടർ ഉണ്ണികൃഷ്ണൻ പുളിക്കൽ ….അവിചാരിതമായ ആ  യാത്രയിൽ കണ്ട മുഖങ്ങളിൽ അദ്ദേഹം ഒന്ന്  തിരിച്ചറിഞ്ഞു .. കാട്ടിലെ  ഈ ജീവിതങ്ങളെ   നാടറിയണം …അവരുടെ ജീവിത രീതികൾ ..അവരുടെ ആചാരങ്ങൾ ,അവരുടെ  സന്തോഷങ്ങൾ  എല്ലാം  നമ്മുടേത്  കൂടിയാകണം … അങ്ങനെ  തൃശൂർ ജില്ലയിലെ വെള്ളിക്കുളങ്ങര വനപ്രാന്തത്തിലെ  ആനപ്പാന്തം  കാടർ ആദിവാസി  സമുദായത്തിലെ  ഊര്,  ഡോക്യുമെന്റ്  ചെയ്തു തുടങ്ങി. അന്ന് പതിനഞ്ച് കുടുംബങ്ങളാണ് ഊരിൽ ഉണ്ടായിരുന്നത് ..1999  ഇൽ ഡോക്ടർ ഉണ്ണികൃഷ്‌ണൻ  പുളിക്കലും  അദ്ദേഹത്തിന്റെ  സുഹൃത്തും  ഗുരുതുല്യനുമായ  ഹെർബെർട്  ആഷർമെൻ മായ്  ചേർന്ന്  ഈ  പ്രൊജക്റ്റ്  ആരംഭിച്ചു ” faces  of  forest “..അന്ന്  മുതൽ  വിവിധ  വര്ഷങ്ങളിലായ്  ഇരുവരും …

Dr.Unni Pulikkal is one of the few to use a large-format field camera By Anna Binoy Express News Service KOCHI: Ever seen those old cameras? The large-format field camera in which the photographer goes behind a dark piece of cloth to click? They are a thing of the past. Or are they? To make introductions brief, Thrissur native Dr Unnikrishnan Pulikkal is one of the limited numbers of people using it. And, no. He is not stuck in the old times. Unnikrishnan is probably the only photographer in the country to do conceptual photography using the large-format field camera. “After clicking, one …

By Priyadarshini  S. / August 2, 2018 “Art Returns, a programme that takes art back to the community, reconnects through photo archives with the forest people of Anappantham, before and after a landslip changed their lives.” It was chasing the chocolate albatross, the delicate white and yellow butterfly, that led Unni Pulikkal reach deep into the forests of Anappantham. Training his camera, while in search of the evasive winged creatures, he often found himself among the dense jungles of Vellikulangara Reserve Forest, off Thrissur. It was on those trails, undertaken as part of a project to photograph and document butterflies …

TO HER FAIR WORKS DID NATURE LINK THE HUMAN SOUL:  by Shilpa Vijayakrishnan / TASVEER JOURNAL “I believe in beauty. I believe in stones and water, air and soil, people and their future and their fate.” – Ansel Adams The idea of nature as the ultimate canvas, upon which unfathomable beauty is etched, is one that has engaged the interest and exercised the imagination of numerous artists over the centuries. From Grecian and Roman frescoes, to Chinese ink painting conventions, through the lineage of Western landscape painting to photography – the depiction of natural scenery, with all its varieties and in all …

L i g h t The Photography of Unni Krishnan Pulikkal And Rabindranath Tagore’s GITANJALY Light, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light, heart-sweetening light! Photo-Graphis. Photo-Graphy. Photography. Greek for Light Writing. The embodiment of the magic union of Art and Science. The physical manifestation of the All Seeing Eye. And to whom does that eye belong? Unni Krishnan Pulikkal, the man behind the camera? The One who chooses the precise moment to see, to point and to capture? Or the One to whom the image is shown, for whom the emotion of response is a sharp suck of …

(On Unni Pulikkal’s exhibition ‘Rhapsody in Abstraction’) RHAPSODY IN ABSTRACTION The process of transforming shapes having sensory stimulation into significant forms creating imageries of meaningful situations is an individual’s internal / mental activity of presentation and re-presentation of concepts. The production of new concepts by the artist with cognitive skills in creativity is his/ her intellectual and aesthetic activity and the subsequent satisfactory response to it by the onlooker is the counter-signature for it. Any activity is placed between standardization and efficiency, and the semiotics of keeping a real shape as a sign is a kind of surrogate for concept. …

(Written by Vijayakumar Menon, Art hisorian, for the book ‘EVOLUTION: Catalogue of Photography 1999 – 2009′ by Unni Krishnan Pulikkal Curiosity to know and delight in understanding the essence of what is seen in the world have been forcing human beings from time immemorial to represent it in terms of visual language structured by humankind. The varied ways of communicating the sight and feel created new patterns of expression in every culture, and visual arts could authenticate the world around in terms of pictures and sculptures in the beginning. As the reflected world in the mind and brain translated into …

Rhapsody in Abstraction Padma Jayaraj, Thrissur padmajayaraj@gmail.com September 26, 2009 (Published in www.narthaki.com) The ongoing exhibition, Rhapsody in Abstraction, of Fine Art Photography at Chaitanya Art Gallery, Kochi is a unique show. The artist, Unnikrishnan Pulikkal embarks on a rare quest through a not very familiar terrain. An artist capturing an exceptional moment from the space-time continuum and framing it in a special context to highlight an insight, is what Fine Art Photography is all about. But one needs to be an alchemist to turn base metal into gold. Here the artist is a chosen one with a God given …

(On Unni Pulikkal’s exhibition ‘Rhapsody in Abstraction’) The New Indian Express news service First Published : 14 Sep 2009 12:02:00 AM IST KOCHI: A fine blend of photographic technique and aesthetic imagination. The result? Photographs with a pictorial quality. Each photo taken by Unnikrishnan Pulikkal displayed at the exhibition titled ‘Rhapsody in Abstraction’ is a painting in itself. Leaves, flowers and other aspects of nature acquire artistic appeal when captured in microscopic detail. Not surprising, as the photographer, who is incidentally a practising doctor, has a background in fine arts. “Fine art photography is something which has been experimented with …

(On Unni Pulikkal’s exhibition ‘Rhapsody in Abstraction’) Monday, Sep 21, 2009 Where distinct frames form a perfect sequence One expects a photographic exhibition to be essentially mimetic, or a composition really or an interpretation of a visual element that the photographer has encountered. ‘Rhapsody in Abstraction’, an exhibition of photographs by Dr. Unni Krishnan Pullikal is on Chaitanya Art Gallery. The exhibition concludes on September 30. But with ‘Rhapsody in Abstraction’, Dr. Unni Krishnan Pulikkal turns painter-photographer. Most of the photographs at the exhibition are in sequences, of course there are individual frames too. But some of the most striking …