Photography & Beyond

Contemporary Photography as Sighting Vying for Citing

PhotoMail — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 06:32:06 +0000

Sighting is always accidental and definitely at times eagerly waited for. Examples could be taken from two different types of star gazing; one from astronomy and the other from the film world. Crazy fans of both astronomy and film stars do wait for the sighting of their focus of interest and the knowledge about their appearance is limited and vague. In the former’s case precision spotting is possible now with technological advancements but in the latter case the information of a star’s arrival is pretty vague and it is not even necessary that he/she appears in the expected point of entry. In both the cases there is a long and patient waiting. But among the innumerable images captured by the crazy fans or amateur photographers none qualifies as a ‘citable’ image. The citable images are those clicked and distributed selectively or ‘officially’ by the authorities.

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Flâneur’s Notes II, Image is an Artefact

PhotoMail — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 07:22:15 +0000

The lone boot is rather a disturbing image; much pain inducing than the aggressive and cautious posture of the freedom fighters backed up by the Indian Army (definitely Kishore Parekh is on the winning side as he was taken to the combat zone by an Indian army General in his vehicle). A closer look reveals that the boot does not belong to the fighters. They wear rubber slippers and are not in combat fatigue. The image tells something more; the Indian army gives the backup and ammunition to the native freedom fighters but does not fight from the front.

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Flâneur Notes: The Truth of Old Photographs

PhotoMail — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 09:08:15 +0000

The location is Rabindra Bhavan, Mandi House, New Delhi, the seat of three academies (Fine Arts, Music, and Literature). It also has a three storey gallery designed by Habib Rahman, an erstwhile PWD Engineer, and father of noted photographer and activist, Ram Rahman, where hopeful artists come from faraway places to make it big in the art scene.

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A Sense of Dislocation

PhotoMail — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 07:17:59 +0000

Indian photography hasn’t seen many such explorations that interact and intersect with other media such as light art. But this has started to change in the last couple of years, with a few photographers trying to do light painting; and it is in this context that Joyel K Pious and Gaurav Rachamalla’s collaborative photo project becomes striking. Although this style is popular in the west, this collaborative project stands tall and distinctive amidst the usual Indian street and documentary photographs. It probes the philosophical underpinnings that are intrinsic to the medium itself as well as pose several questions related to urbanisation.

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On Ajith Nedumangad’s Photographs

PhotoMail — Sun, 12 Aug 2018 22:16:37 +0000

It is the sheer absurdity of the sculptures created and photographed by Ajith that hits the viewer right from the off – juxtapositions (reminiscent of the Dadaists and Surrealists) in which materials and the forms they are used to create are often in conflict with each other and, at other times, are self-referential in a darkly humorous manner.

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