LUCKNOW: In a group photograph, no face should get lost in the crowd — even if the group is 50,000-strong. In a single line, this is the motto of the Belgian photographer Hans Roels. His dream project, The Portrait, is set to put Lucknow on the world map by shooting the world’s largest self-portrait here. A group of 50,000 students, in school uniform, from a city school will pose by the Gomti river. A total of 100 cameras, operated by students themselves, will click 1,500 pictures, which will be stitched together to make a single portrait.

The stage, 1km-long, will then get a life-size photo installation of the students’ photos.

It all began when Hans, the art director of The Portrait, was sitting in his office Belgium after a photo shoot of a local school. That photograph had 1,700 students and each face was visible clearly.

“I thought to myself, what if I do the same thing with more students. Perhaps in the world’s largest school…I searched and found that City Montessori School in Lucknow was the world’s largest school. There began my journey and the entire process to get things finalized until now took me more than a year.”

Aiming for three places in the Guinness Book of World Records, the project is targeting the record of the largest self-portrait in the world, the longest photo installation in the world, and the longest stage in the world.

The photographers in the project are going to be students themselves. A total of 200 student volunteers (apart from the 50,000 in the frame) will be trained to use the high-definition cameras.

The project is scheduled for November 2016. The UP Tourism has been appointed to oversee the project on the riverbank.

The students will be required to rehearse January onwards. A team from Belgium will visit Lucknow all through January to November to train students and teachers, class-wise, to make a formation on a model stage on their school campuses.

Arranging 50,000 students of classes from kindergarten to standard XII that day would be impossible if they don’t exactly know what their position is on that massive stage, explains Hans.

There will be 100 columns and 100 cameras. Each camera clicks one column in 15 successive clicks. In total, 1,500 photographs are to be stitched together.

A French company is sponsoring the stitching of the photographs together. Technology will give it a seamless look of a single photograph.

“Each student has to take responsibility of the photograph. Even if one head is turned, it will ruin the picture,” says Hans.

The figure of 50,000 includes 2,750 student volunteers who will act as guides to help the students take their place. The younger students, those of kindergarten, might be excluded if the exercise gets too tiresome or uncomfortable for them.

“Safety and comfort of the students is of foremost importance,” says Hans.

A month after the shooting, the photograph will be printed, in parts, on life size panels which will be erected on the same stage.

“It will be a 1,000metre-long life-size canvas. Each pupil will be clearly visible. A total of 4,000 panels will be put up,” says Hans.

“It will be as if they are posing again. Visitors and tourists can take photographs among these pupils. Parents can stand with the photos of their children.”

Amit Mittal, executive committee member of the Belgium Luxembourg Business Association — it is supporting the project — says, “It is incredible. It may look like it’s just a photograph but there have been hundreds of ideas and hundreds piles of papers behind it.”

He adds, “This is an artistic realization. There is no commercial aspect to this project. We are still working on how much it will cost and how it would be funded.”

The students, Hans says are very excited about the project. In fact, the student photographers are more excited than those who will be clicked, Hans says.

