Crossings: Moments in Passing, An Exhibition Of My Photographs

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My photography exhibition – Crossings: Moments in Passing – opens at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai, next week from Nov 25 to Dec 1 (all days).

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.

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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.

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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.

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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, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai

Duration: 25 Nov – 1 Dec, 2014 (open on all days).

Timings: 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.