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My photography exhibition – Crossings: Moments in Passing – opens
at the Jehangir Art Gallery
The 50+ photographs going on
display were made over my years of meandering around India , seeking moments that place
the everyday in historical, cultural and traditional contexts. And where they
don’t, I sought moments devoid of drama or in the very moment of promising one.
They are about people, and their
immediate and far contexts. Moments caught in transit. Moments that came to
stay with me.
I’ve attempted to turn the
fleeting into a temporary permanence, seeking their meaning as much in what the
moments framed seek to reveal as in their act of concealment for, meanings live
in dualities, and die in convergence.
Among the places I'll be featuring
are Jaipur, Delhi, Bundi, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Kurukshetra, Nashik, Mumbai,
Kolkata, Goa, Murshidabad, Daman, Bijapur, Afzalpur, Mysore, Baroda, Pushkar,
and Mumbai.
~
Why photograph?
Sometimes, long after you last
walked a street, all it takes you to remember it and all that went on in the
middle, is but one framed moment that captures the essence of what you liked
about the street, and how being a part of it made you feel, even if it was
temporary and you were only a passing soul on your way elsewhere.
The opposite is equally true. If
the framed moment is evocative, combines people and their contexts memorably,
aligning elements in ways that makes it distinctive, then streets that are
otherwise unremarkable, or even hostile, turn into memorable ones.
All it takes is one picture to
define a feeling, one feeling to define an experience, and one experience to
define an understanding – of a place and its people, and of self.
This is what makes time on the
street such a dynamic place to be out on with a camera, and a reason why I seek
those moments to frame so I can come away from the place with a feeling for it,
for, without one it’s as if it never existed.
Often, the ‘magical’ moments slip
away but every once in a while there’s one that sticks with you and defines
your journey, for you.
With Crossings: Moments in Passing, I hope to bring those moments to the
fore and share my feelings of those journeys, more an attempt than a certainty.
~
Why Crossings?
In crossings, moments
suspend colours of meaning.
In meandering on the streets and
off it, round corners and straight stretches, I soon realised that in passing
people and places along the way, I was actually passing moments revealing their
lives in passing – everyday moments framed against cultural, linguistic,
architectural, and occasionally historical, backdrops.
I was not so much passing a
moment as walking into the next one, and the next. Together they strung out the
street in a series of temporary human portraits, some of whom briefly came
alive in the moment they crossed over from banal beginnings to equally banal
endings.
It was in the momentary
crossings, when transforming moments flirted with form and colour, sometimes
with intent and import, briefly capturing the essence of the place, that I
sought meaning in my meanderings.
~
Do come over and see the
exhibition, and if family and friends are not averse to seeing yet another
India-centric exhibition of photographs, bring them along too, and help put the
word out. Thanks in advance.
Venue: Jehangir
Art Gallery
Duration: 25 Nov – 1 Dec, 2014 (open on all days).
Timings: 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
