• 
• 
• 
• 

• 
• 

Of spaces and photography

Akansha Rastogi, while expressing unhappiness with the curatorial self-doubt evident in the photography show ‘The Other Side’ at the Stainless Gallery, New Delhi, reviews the exhibits and makes the following positive comments.

-- essentializing the clicked image – capture and produce the moment – think, capture and produce the image – preserving the moment – the risks are too many.

‘The Other Side’ a photography exhibition curated by Ajay Rajgarhia presents works of five photographers (including the curator) at the Stainless Gallery. These five sets of images are from five different geographical spaces, and each evoking a different flavour and texture. Pradeep Dasgupta’s New York, Leena Kejriwal’s Kolkata, Sandeep Biswas’s Europe, Vikas Malhotra’s mountaneous Buddhist landscape, perhaps Lhasa (I am not sure!), Ajay Rajgarhia’s Mathura-UP belt – the attempt is to exchange an experience into a picture. It’s the premeditated in the clicked image that comes out substantially in most of them.

I can’t help recalling ‘This is a Photograph of Me’, a poem by famous Canadian poet Margaret Atwood. Referring to a picture of a lake, low hills, and house – the poet sees herself drowning in the water body. Problematizing time she twice mentions the moment when the photograph was shot – ‘It was taken some time ago’; and again she says in the parentheses, ‘The photograph was taken/ the day after I drowned’. The poet isn’t the one who clicked the picture; she certainly is the subject, but an absent subject for she is under the surface of the water. I am intrigued by the manifestations of ‘photograph-ed self’ in a picture.

To go back to the exhibition under discussion here, it’s the spaces conjured into a photographic ritual that excites me. Leena’s Kolkata has opulence of art and creativity in every corner exclaiming the proud legacy, be it Kumartoli, a small artist’s village where all the Durga idols are prepared for Durga Puja or a Drycleaner’s shop window advertising the service provided through metonymic juggling with words. This is old Calcutta, something yellow, dampening and archaic, something that forever will be part of Kolkata. Even when Leena looks at the urban emblems in the city, it’s through a mirrored approach as if creating an atmospheric window – like in the New Market photograph taken from inside an auto rickshaw.

Pradeep’s body of works in the show is part of his New York series ‘Below the Belt’. They are dramatic portraits of New Yorkers in pensive moods, sometimes reflecting, sometimes gazing into infinity, or sometimes live in action. Following the city through its streets – the connecting inroads, metro trains etc. – Pradeep collects the bits and pieces from the life of New Yorkers, and makes a collage out here. The interesting thing to note is the angular variety in which the shots have been clicked. Pradeep captures the city deluge in the most peaceful fashion.

Rest of the three’s works are more painterly; particularly Sandeep Biswas and Ajay Rajgarhia treat the medium harshly. Sandeep’s works in the show are part of his series ‘Reflections’. They are abstracts with multiple coinciding layers, creating textures and patterns through shadows, reflections in the mirror, through the glass, refracting shiny surfaces. Sandeep plays aloud/around with multiple images in one shot/ one single plane, coming out with juxtaposing hues that furthers away the real space from the viewer. What viewer receives is only an aesthetically beautiful picture … a collateral surface on which all contrasts, juxtapositions have been smoothened. Ajay is fascinated with blue, and looks for blue everywhere to click; plus, his titles are really annoying. Vikas fares well with his solitary landscape photography.

To the curator my sincere piece of observation is I didn’t like the title of the exhibition, ‘The Other Side’, kept with the intention to promote photography as a fine art medium of expression. Economically photography may take time to find acceptance in the Indian art market and in the good collections, but the genre is already established and enjoys a respectful audience and is being looked at earnestly. To be so self-doubting doesn’t furnish the growth in the right direction all the time. This isn’t about sermonizing. But a call for curating strong photography exhibition.