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Review
Portraits with Counter Gaze..
Photography artist, humanist and social thinker, Samar Jodha spent four years amongst the Tai Phake community in the remote area of Phaneng in Northern Assam. The result of this was twelve great portraits of people, which are currently shown at the Arts i, Religare Arts Initiative, New Delhi. Anubhav Nath reviews the show.
You enter a totally blacked-out space and our given a torch by the guard to find your way inside. All you can see is very dim lights in a distance and all you hear is jugnoos singing their tireless song. Really feels like you have transcended into the remotes part of rural India but actually you are in the middle of Delhi’s suburbia in Connaught Place at Gallery Arts i, attending ‘Phaneng: A Journey into Personal Engagement’, photographer, social-thinker and humanist, Samar Jodha’s latest solo show. With this show Jodha has “resurfaced” after a four-year-sabbatical, a good part of which has been spent in Phaneng, a small village in Assam.
Jodha got involved with the Tai Phake community way back in 2004, while driving through on another project. “ I have spent a large part of the past four years living amongst and working with members of this tribe in Phaneng, a small village in upper Assam. Due to various reasons, this tribe numbers a mere 1500 today and is on the verge of extinction,” he says passionately. The tribals live and work in close proximity to modern coal mining projects that are slowly eating into their forests, culture and lifestyle, which will slowly but surely lead to the extinction of the tribe for no fault of theirs.
While staying there for four years, he initiated an education project, a monastery, and a unique eco-tourism project that has built local capacity as well as raised incomes and this unique portraiture project just happens to have evolved out of his interaction with and within the community.
The blacked-out exhibition space has been created to evoke a sense of Phaneng: a place without electricity and modern amenities and with the soundscape of jugnoos that are also the only “reliable” source of light there.
This exhibition of 12 large-scale black and white format portraits was made in Jodha’s hut-studio and residence in the village. He uses special large film format cameras and reflectors to capture these portraits. Before showing these works here, Jodha held an exhibition in the village itself and has plans for to tour this exhibition around the world.
The subject matter of Jodha’s photographs is tricky to do well. Especially, since it deals with the subject of a tribe and it’s culture on the threshold of extinction. Per say, it is easy to over-sentimentalize and become cliché. Only someone like Jodha, with a skilled eye and a deep empathetic disposition can pull off something like this with such great finesse.
The show goes on till December 8th and is a must-see.
