Some Curation
Important: This page does not cover incidents and entities I have curated that are discussed elsewhere on this site (see: The AeA & The IDEA)
I have never really been, and never entirely am in the business of arts-event management or being a fulltime artist. Did however professionally put together quite a few business events like conferences and seminars through the mid- to late-1990s, while working to initially help set up and run my wife Poonam's businesses. But I don't do that any longer and am in any case limiting this page to just my association with the arts, and that too, only just the more significant events I've done.
Accordingly ~ the few relatively 'major' public arts-events I have organized and (always) participated in through life thus far have each been founded upon impulsive personal responses to various circumstances of the time (often a long story as you will find below),.. and perhaps also just a wee tad of those two old sutras from the Kamasutra, which hold that [a] it is recommended as a small part of the responsibility of every adult citizen to initiate, be involved with and support good community activities and get-togethers such as festivals, theatre & music-performances, exhibitions and the like., and [b] an individual should always study and practice a full 64 "Arts" in pursuit of evolving into a complete human-being... which would make her/him always a bit of an artist too, amongst many different things,.. at least when necessary. For the record here, many commentators confuse this Kamasutra concept of "64 Arts" (i.e. 'subjects') to mean 64 different sexual positions!
Accordingly ~ the few relatively 'major' public arts-events I have organized and (always) participated in through life thus far have each been founded upon impulsive personal responses to various circumstances of the time (often a long story as you will find below),.. and perhaps also just a wee tad of those two old sutras from the Kamasutra, which hold that [a] it is recommended as a small part of the responsibility of every adult citizen to initiate, be involved with and support good community activities and get-togethers such as festivals, theatre & music-performances, exhibitions and the like., and [b] an individual should always study and practice a full 64 "Arts" in pursuit of evolving into a complete human-being... which would make her/him always a bit of an artist too, amongst many different things,.. at least when necessary. For the record here, many commentators confuse this Kamasutra concept of "64 Arts" (i.e. 'subjects') to mean 64 different sexual positions!
OPEN STAGE
(Triveni Kalasangam Open-Air Theatre / New Delhi / March 9, 1980):
The story of "Open Stage" began with my good friend Rakesh Mishra popping down to India from Canada in the late-1970s, to attempt establishing a tabloid youth-magazine of his very own from an accumulated bankroll of about USD $1,500/-. The very idea was a patently unlikely proposition of course, but we were all pretty wild young bucks at the time, and, as an enthusiastic friend and fulltime journalist myself, it's not surprising that I should have got involved too. In the end, we did indeed bring out that good old magazine we called "Perception" for a full 3 editions or so together,.. before monies expectedly ran out and had us all trickle back to our own separate original/individual works again ~ exhausted and exhilarated by what we had done and also what we had attempted to do!
It obviously didn't take any further than the first issue for us to realize that we desperately needed to generate some publicity and word-of-mouth if we were going to get anywhere with the project. On the other hand however, committing any little bit at all of our meagre funds was of course out of the question for any such "tangential" concerns,.. and so that's how we finally came up with the idea for "Open Stage".
Here's how it worked: [a] Rakesh and I visited Mrs. Sridharani, mistress of the Triveni Kalasangam complex of cultural centre/exhibition galleries/perfomance spaces/art schools & studios etc. in Central Delhi, and sweet-talked the sweetheart into letting us have the Open-Air Theatre for an evening. [b] We then carried this good news down to the old audio-studio that used to tenant the Triveni basement at the time, and got them to agree to also support the project with a full complement of microphones, amplifiers and PA system for the night. [c] Finally, our printer pitched in on a poster that we pasted up in all of the sorts of places we thought it would be seen by the sorts of folks we wanted to address with both the magazine and the show.
The notion of the show itself was simple enough too. In sum, here was to be a fully kitted-out stage before a substantially unforseeable audience, which could be addressed for a reasonable period of time in the course of the evening by any reasonably interesting creative performer in need/search of such an opportunity for any reason at all, and all he/she had to do to have a crack at it was contact us in advance so we could slot the performace into the schedule. Expectedly, the "for western acoustic music" phrase in the poster was already being amended and expanded almost before the posters even started rolling off the press,.. and there were a lot more aspirants looking to perform than we could eventually accommodate!
In the event, more than a couple of hundred people turned up at Open Stage, packing the little open-air theatre and cafe next door to overflowing even though the show-date and time eventually clashed with a major international jazz show in another part of town. Fascinating creative and other folks of all description somehow came together like they never had before, and perhaps never would again in the city, and there was lots of all sorts of music, all sorts of poetry, oratory and even some theatre and political statements (!!) in the whole kaliedoscope of what happened through that one long magic and ever-so-slightly-mad winter evening so long ago.
Although many folks wished for us to replicate Open Stage as an annual event, we were more than satiated with what had come of this little diversion from what we had actually been trying to do,.. and life moved on.
(Triveni Kalasangam Open-Air Theatre / New Delhi / March 9, 1980):
The story of "Open Stage" began with my good friend Rakesh Mishra popping down to India from Canada in the late-1970s, to attempt establishing a tabloid youth-magazine of his very own from an accumulated bankroll of about USD $1,500/-. The very idea was a patently unlikely proposition of course, but we were all pretty wild young bucks at the time, and, as an enthusiastic friend and fulltime journalist myself, it's not surprising that I should have got involved too. In the end, we did indeed bring out that good old magazine we called "Perception" for a full 3 editions or so together,.. before monies expectedly ran out and had us all trickle back to our own separate original/individual works again ~ exhausted and exhilarated by what we had done and also what we had attempted to do!
It obviously didn't take any further than the first issue for us to realize that we desperately needed to generate some publicity and word-of-mouth if we were going to get anywhere with the project. On the other hand however, committing any little bit at all of our meagre funds was of course out of the question for any such "tangential" concerns,.. and so that's how we finally came up with the idea for "Open Stage".
Here's how it worked: [a] Rakesh and I visited Mrs. Sridharani, mistress of the Triveni Kalasangam complex of cultural centre/exhibition galleries/perfomance spaces/art schools & studios etc. in Central Delhi, and sweet-talked the sweetheart into letting us have the Open-Air Theatre for an evening. [b] We then carried this good news down to the old audio-studio that used to tenant the Triveni basement at the time, and got them to agree to also support the project with a full complement of microphones, amplifiers and PA system for the night. [c] Finally, our printer pitched in on a poster that we pasted up in all of the sorts of places we thought it would be seen by the sorts of folks we wanted to address with both the magazine and the show.
The notion of the show itself was simple enough too. In sum, here was to be a fully kitted-out stage before a substantially unforseeable audience, which could be addressed for a reasonable period of time in the course of the evening by any reasonably interesting creative performer in need/search of such an opportunity for any reason at all, and all he/she had to do to have a crack at it was contact us in advance so we could slot the performace into the schedule. Expectedly, the "for western acoustic music" phrase in the poster was already being amended and expanded almost before the posters even started rolling off the press,.. and there were a lot more aspirants looking to perform than we could eventually accommodate!
In the event, more than a couple of hundred people turned up at Open Stage, packing the little open-air theatre and cafe next door to overflowing even though the show-date and time eventually clashed with a major international jazz show in another part of town. Fascinating creative and other folks of all description somehow came together like they never had before, and perhaps never would again in the city, and there was lots of all sorts of music, all sorts of poetry, oratory and even some theatre and political statements (!!) in the whole kaliedoscope of what happened through that one long magic and ever-so-slightly-mad winter evening so long ago.
Although many folks wished for us to replicate Open Stage as an annual event, we were more than satiated with what had come of this little diversion from what we had actually been trying to do,.. and life moved on.
SOLO SHOW of Pen & Ink Works
(Triveni Gallery / Triveni Kalasangam / July 27-August 8, 1981):
One early and sustained side-dish that emerged from Open Stage was a surprisingly enthusiatic respone to the poster for the show (above), which I had in fact had to draw and design myself just because there was no one else to do it!
So alright, I'd attended a few months of arts-college classes before opting for a diploma in journalism instead, and I'd always enjoyed doing a bit of drawing and painting on the side (and ceratinly felt I could/should have done better with the poster), but the response eventually had me actually shoot for a full-tilt solo-show of pen'n'ink works within a year after Open Stage,.. and sweet lil' ole Mrs. Sridharani was kind enough to quickly confirm that I could have the little Triveni Gallery alongside the open-air theatre for this.
So ~ 'twas long and late nights then for several months leading up to the show, after long days spent slogging life out as a journalist. With pencils, erasers, crow-quills and ink for my tools, I managed to create a fresh new drawing on a fresh new sheet of handmade paper almost every night for a long, long time leading up to that show. (at that rate of course, most were trashed, or at least never even included in the show!)
So, what's to say? The show went off 'great', with a pretty crowded opening and fun post-opening party, and I did in fact sell several works on the very first night itself. Here's what some of the newspaper reviews (which somehow survived in my wife's records) had to say about it all:
"Several of Shankar Barua's drawings take off from the human form. Extremeties, heads and torsos are projected on the screen of white paper with the distortionist and contortionist devices one usually associates with some of the creators of Gothic arts....
"... While a few of the works overdo this to the point of our discomfort or disconcernment, some others, like the snippet on the old couple, is a meaningfully balanced composition..."
Keshav Malik / Times of India, August 4, 1981
"Shankar Barua presented drawings which recall the sketches of Renaissance artists who were bemused by pathological distortions of human visage and anatomy. This is rapidly becoming a facile strategem for beginners who find expressionist distortion much less demanding than realistic drawing. Of less ambiguous quality were Barua's colour drawings with brush and ink...."
Krishna Chaitanya / ...?
"Shankar Barua's drawings and a few watercolour washes, now mounted at the Triveni Gallery, show a fast maturing draughtsman with sensitiveness and rich imagination.
"Particularly in distorting the human body, Shankar Barua shows his masterly grip of the medium, that is, pen-and-ink. Some of his drawings are touched up by black watercolour, and one of them looks grimly intense (an elderly man and an old woman). Even though his distortion of human forms verge on fantasy, the general tenor of the present exhibition gives the viewer a feel of the macabre:- men and women come out of dark limbo. A headless female form is neatly tied up at the neck, just like a sagging bundle of rags. Some faces appear almost shapeless, soft and leper-like, showing deep cavities of the eye-sockets, suggesting the skull beneath the skin.
"The image of the sylvan diety Pan undergoes a fantastic transformation at the hand of the artist: the head reminds you of one of those uncouth extinct saurians, only the shaggy goat-feet and the reed-pipe hint at the transformed diety of the Greco-Roman lineage.
"The evil and dark forces of life, and their victims -- all these are Shankar Barua's subjects."
?,. / Indian Express / August 2, 1981
At the end of the day, the key bottom line of the whole show for me was that I had earned nowhere near a year's wages from almost a year's (albeit part-time) labour,.. and so I gave the whole notion a toss and took off soon after this into the wide world of adventure-travel writing & photography for almost a decade before (eventually) coming back to the Triveni Kalasangam complex for a show again almost exactly ten years later (when I -coincidentally- also did some professional illustration work too awhile).
(Triveni Gallery / Triveni Kalasangam / July 27-August 8, 1981):
One early and sustained side-dish that emerged from Open Stage was a surprisingly enthusiatic respone to the poster for the show (above), which I had in fact had to draw and design myself just because there was no one else to do it!
So alright, I'd attended a few months of arts-college classes before opting for a diploma in journalism instead, and I'd always enjoyed doing a bit of drawing and painting on the side (and ceratinly felt I could/should have done better with the poster), but the response eventually had me actually shoot for a full-tilt solo-show of pen'n'ink works within a year after Open Stage,.. and sweet lil' ole Mrs. Sridharani was kind enough to quickly confirm that I could have the little Triveni Gallery alongside the open-air theatre for this.
So ~ 'twas long and late nights then for several months leading up to the show, after long days spent slogging life out as a journalist. With pencils, erasers, crow-quills and ink for my tools, I managed to create a fresh new drawing on a fresh new sheet of handmade paper almost every night for a long, long time leading up to that show. (at that rate of course, most were trashed, or at least never even included in the show!)
So, what's to say? The show went off 'great', with a pretty crowded opening and fun post-opening party, and I did in fact sell several works on the very first night itself. Here's what some of the newspaper reviews (which somehow survived in my wife's records) had to say about it all:
"Several of Shankar Barua's drawings take off from the human form. Extremeties, heads and torsos are projected on the screen of white paper with the distortionist and contortionist devices one usually associates with some of the creators of Gothic arts....
"... While a few of the works overdo this to the point of our discomfort or disconcernment, some others, like the snippet on the old couple, is a meaningfully balanced composition..."
Keshav Malik / Times of India, August 4, 1981
"Shankar Barua presented drawings which recall the sketches of Renaissance artists who were bemused by pathological distortions of human visage and anatomy. This is rapidly becoming a facile strategem for beginners who find expressionist distortion much less demanding than realistic drawing. Of less ambiguous quality were Barua's colour drawings with brush and ink...."
Krishna Chaitanya / ...?
"Shankar Barua's drawings and a few watercolour washes, now mounted at the Triveni Gallery, show a fast maturing draughtsman with sensitiveness and rich imagination.
"Particularly in distorting the human body, Shankar Barua shows his masterly grip of the medium, that is, pen-and-ink. Some of his drawings are touched up by black watercolour, and one of them looks grimly intense (an elderly man and an old woman). Even though his distortion of human forms verge on fantasy, the general tenor of the present exhibition gives the viewer a feel of the macabre:- men and women come out of dark limbo. A headless female form is neatly tied up at the neck, just like a sagging bundle of rags. Some faces appear almost shapeless, soft and leper-like, showing deep cavities of the eye-sockets, suggesting the skull beneath the skin.
"The image of the sylvan diety Pan undergoes a fantastic transformation at the hand of the artist: the head reminds you of one of those uncouth extinct saurians, only the shaggy goat-feet and the reed-pipe hint at the transformed diety of the Greco-Roman lineage.
"The evil and dark forces of life, and their victims -- all these are Shankar Barua's subjects."
?,. / Indian Express / August 2, 1981
At the end of the day, the key bottom line of the whole show for me was that I had earned nowhere near a year's wages from almost a year's (albeit part-time) labour,.. and so I gave the whole notion a toss and took off soon after this into the wide world of adventure-travel writing & photography for almost a decade before (eventually) coming back to the Triveni Kalasangam complex for a show again almost exactly ten years later (when I -coincidentally- also did some professional illustration work too awhile).
MILESTONES (Ravi Pasricha, Hemen Sanghvi & Shankar Barua / Sridharani Gallery / Triveni Kalasangam / July 5-10, 1991):
This was perhaps the most successful show I've ever done thus far in terms of the sheer impact it had upon a medium in (at least) Delhi. Not a little part of the luck with this was all about the standing and reputation and professional excellence of the two photographers who agreed to be part of the show with me ~ Ravi Pasricha (at left) and Hemen Sanghvi (centre)... but I may be getting ahead of myself here, since the story's pretty interesting in being slightly important even to the history of photography (again ~ at least) in this city!
Briefly then ~ in 1990, my little family and I moved to a bigger house in a new development on the outskirts of Delhi,... and found ourselves without a telephone for a full one year! With regard to my career as a photographer, this meant that I soon enough had to face up to the issue of how very dispensable I could be as a professional by this little circumstance ~ as in: "Can't get Shankar on the phone???!! Well, call the next chap on the list!"
Not surprisingly, I was outraged and humiliated... and finally reacted very poorly indeed one evening I'm afraid, by taking out my entire photo-stock accumulated over almost ten years of arduous treks and travels, and dumping it in a barrel of water ~ with soy sauce and vinegar.
Hilariously enough however, the very next day found me buying another camera for myself, when I recognized a Leica M3 (dressed up with a klutzy Russian flash-gun!) on offer for about the equivalent of $40/- US amongst a spread of Russian camera gear and other photo-goods at a pavement-shop in Old Delhi. Not quite believing my luck, I first took aboard the notion that the camera was probably just a cheap Russian copy with the "e" and "i" of "Leica" interchanged or some such thing, but handling it left me in no doubt that it was an absolutely super piece of machinery regardless of who'd made it or where it came from, and it seemed to be working just fine!
Then, I stopped and recalled what I'd done about my whole photography career just the evening before and decided to check out how intently fate (and perhaps even the very gods!) was seeking to guide me here. First order of business was therefore to 'bluff' the seller into re-quoting me a price for the camera, "without the flash-gun,".. which unhesitatingly brought down the asking-price about a quarter,.. and then I took a double-handed grip upon my luck of the moment and declared that since the camera seemed a really-really old model (regardless of how well-preserved it may have been) I wouldn't think to bid more than about the equivalent of $20/-,.......... AND THEY LET ME HAVE IT thanksverymuch!!!!! (** see note below)
Other things obviously also happened to my life at the time with the shift of home and slowdown of assignments, of which a key transition came about from meeting Ravi, who operated as a commercial & industrial photographer in addition to running Statfotos, a pro-photo-lab where all sorts of fascinating photographers popped in to get work done and also shoot the breeze on the medium and issues to do with it, with whosoever else happened to be at hand. For the record here: almost all of my earlier lab work as a professional photographer (that is, through the 1980s) was processed and printed at Madan Mahatta's pro-lab.
Ravi and I became close friends, and I soon migrated what little photography work I was still doing to his lab, where I soon discovered Guru, his stone-deaf lab-technician who turned out to be the only printer I've ever worked with who could intuitively understand and produce almost everything I expected of my B/W photography from my negatives.
It obviously didn't take long for me to get down to thinking of photography as a creative medium,... with which I could logically be able to actually do what only I could do, and thereby make myself not so easily 'dispensable' ever again. And so I carefully shot 6 rolls of black and white film with the Leica, examined my results, railroaded Ravi and Hemen into digging into their stock-piles to join me in putting together a good show within a few months, and then got back once again to Mrs. Sridharani at Triveni Kalasangam to have her open Triveni's main "Sridharani Gallery" a week early after the summer-break, just for our show.
Format was simple. As equal partners and good friends, each of us just assumed independent creative freedom and responsibility for our own respective parts of the show (with me coordinating of course). Accordingly, we measured the total length of hanging space available to us in the rectangular gallery and shared that equally, with my images taking up most of the left wall, Hemen's on most of the right wall and Ravi's on the far wall from the entrance, spilling over to the ends of both the left and the right walls.
And wellwellwell! Milestones blitzed Delhi like it had perhaps never been blitzed before by such a 'regular' exhibition of works from local photographers. As a touchstone example of what the response was like ~ of the six copies of the publicity-still that we printed and circulated (above right), at least five were reproduced in top print-publications. And there were interviews, calender entries, critiques and reviews everywhere.
Here are some extracts of what was written about (mainly) the works I showed:
"The exhibition... exhibits works of three innovative photographers, who have overcome constraints of literalness by introducing creative images elevating the medium to an art form, each one retaining his specific signature...
"...Shankar Barua is on a voyage of discovery. To make his images come out stronger, he uses flashes of water colours innovatively on black and white photographs. Stark images such as the man with colourful umbrellas and a pair of shoes with red painted laces, give Barua a specific niche in the world of creative photography in India..."
Neelam Matthews, Hindustan Times, July 6, 1991
"It's a show that rests on some grit, much orginality and a dash of bravado...
"... but probably the most determinedly innovative of the three is Shankar Barua (35).... Using manual cameras to take some very carefully composed, even innocuous looking stills, he has transformed them by selectively overpainting parts of each photograph... A pervasive humour and careful artistry distinguishes his work..."
Gayatri Sinha, Sunday Times of India, July 7, 1991
"The exhibition... deserves serious attention of those whose appreciation of photography is not restricted either to the pure aesthetics of camera-work or to their value as records...
".. Shankar Barua is comparatively more inward looking, and shows a preference for the poetic. He is deliberate in the placement of the objects and in the use of their contrasting textures. He is a fine photographer, and that is why I wonder why he had to hand-colour parts of his works... The practice, I think is not necessary..."
Santo Datta, Indian Express, July 8, 1991
"Of these three photographers, Shankar Barua likes to touch up his prints with colour...
"... I'd add the marmaladed boots as another handsome entry..."
Keshav Malik, Times of India, July 9, 1991
"... The other thing to do with photography is to use it as Shankar Barua does; in the realms of art.... It's there. You will find it in the stark partially hand coloured black and white prints exhibited by Shankar. Images of J&B Whisky advertisements and Andy Warhol flit through your mind trying to connect to Shankar's images..."
Santanu Mitra, Economic Times, July 5, 1991
"If a picture speaks a thousand words then there was a veritable feast of verbiage at Triveni recently...
"... From Shankar Barua's almost pen-and-ink intricate black and white shots embellished with a discreet dash of colour, through Hemen Sanghvi's quiet sepia prints freezing the timeless perspectives of old buildings, to Ravi Pasricha's celebration of life in a kaeidoscope of riotous coulour, the exhibits enthralled and never palled inspite of a definite repitition of subject matter. The ordinariness of Barua's subjects: old boots, worn down shoes, an abandoned basket resting on a nest of twigs, an alley dog asleep framed by the claustrophic wall of the narrow lane, take on an added interest in the artists' treatment of his subject: the angle of the shot; the object he wishes to highlight..."
"... Barua's black and white photographs reveal the latent meaningfulness of everyday objects..."
".. A word about the choice of frames. Obviously much thought had gone into the selection, for the mounts not only blended with the photographs but accentuated them as well. Pasricha's choice for his bright colours was frames of painted monsoon grey. Sanghvi selected wooden frames with a textured, heavy, old look in brown. Barua's prints were mounted on a white backdrop against textured hard-board, faced with glass and neatly buttoned in place with four steel tacks. All were simple, but effective."
Rehana Sen, Indian Express Weekend, July 20, 91
(**And what of the Leica? Well, part of the story of why it came to me so cheap seems to have been that it had probably lain in the attic or trunk of an unappreciative owner or inheritor for decades,.. and so the shutter-curtains of rubber-faced fabric had stiffened in situ,.. thereby developing cracks and pin-pricks after I'd shot not more than about 15 rolls of film with it! Value for money? Maybe!)
*So now, here's the little 'history' bit about the whole show by my reckoning:
To begin with, what Milestines most certainly did almost instantly was spur a very substantial and entirely unprecedented domino-like tide of photography shows in Delhi over the next several years. The first amongst these were by Ashok Dilwali (who potted a suddenly-vacant slot at the same Sridharani Gallery for just about a month after us, when he visited our show-opening) and Ashim Ghosh (who scored three days for a show of his own in the Committee Room of the India International Centre on almost the same dates as our show, when he twigged what we were upto from interactions with us all at Statfotos, several weeks earlier).
The biggest and most important reaction to Milestones however came, I believe, from our common good friend and social-landscape Photographer & Commentator, Satish Sharma ~ whom we'd somehow neglected to invite into our show. What he did at the time may not be associated by many folks with a reaction to the breakthrough success of our show, but I will always believe otherwise... for very many good reasons.
So, very briefly, a couple of Satish's photographs had recently been curated alongwith works from several top Indian news-photographers by a pair of German individuals, into a show of Indian photography that had been 'touring' Germany since then. Now, the Government of India at the same time happened to be developing the "Festival of India in Germany", and so the curators of Satish's show petitioned for it to be included in the Festival (for a fat fee of course), but were politely declined,.. just like zillions of proposals before and after them.
This little matter was then stirred up by Satish amongst the news-photographer and reporter community in Delhi into a massive case splashed across the newspapers, of covert government censorship of a creative art-form, and pressure was brought to bear upon the Minister for Culture at the time, Mr. Arjun Singh, to redress the situation. Forced into a corner by what in the hulabaloo was now coalescing into a pretty powerful sort of "News-Photographers Union", Mr Singh at first sought to adroitly slip through by commiting to officially commission a brand-new show of photography for the Festival,... and this time, it was his offer that was declined, on the basis that this was just another manifestation of attempted official censorship ~ i.e. by selective inclusion of participants and images instead of selective exclusion.
In the end, a quiet deal was eventually struck between the news-photographers and the minister, with many little wheels within wheels to it. Of that I am certain.
What's out in the open is that the cabal of Satish and his news-photographer pals registered themselves soon after this as a non-profit association of professionals called the "Forum of Contemporary Photographers" (FCP), whose first order of business was to discreetly translate the minister's equally discreet peace-offering of a seed-grant of Rs. 5,00,000/- into a two-day "National Seminar on Photography", for discussing and cogitating upon grave matters of the medium a few months later at the India International Centre.
There was approximately no pre-publicity at all for the event and not many photographers from outside the cabal were invited to that national seminar. A list of "photographers who could not attend" published in the seminar-report later also made quite clear that everyone and anyone else was uninvited.. like, for example, me! But I popped in anyway!!
The line-up around the table was pretty fascinating, with the new office-bearers of the new FCP flanked by government officials of the culture ministry taking up the head of the conference table. Satish was obviously there too, bobbing about and interjecting and holding forth every now and again as General Secretary and prime-mover of the new enterprise. Several members shuffled quietly about the room (and even out onto the window ledge!), shooting images of the entire proceedings from every conceivable angle for history and posterity. A few of those small-town photographers (and art-college teachers generally) whom we all knew from their lifelong commitment to photographing tribals and suchlike on the peripheries of their neighbourhoods, had also been invited, and enthusiastically took their turns to demand more government 'support' and 'recognition' for the medium. A couple of senior photographers and office-bearers of the "Advertising and Industrial Photographers Association" (AIPA) were also present, but remained aloof from FCP membership and the mainstream discussions of the meet, choosing instead to only draw attention to IPR issues.
Extracts from the minutes of the proceedings of that national seminar (including one version of the key comment I made several times) are on public record in the seminar-report, but here's a bit of my understanding of some of what was sought to be achieved, and what eventually came of that.
[i] top order of business was of course to milk the Government of India's Ministry for Culture to the degree possible. Accordingly, by the time the FCP pretty much fizzled out some two years later, every member had participated in, and been compensated for participating in, at least two major government-funded photography projects ("Project Punjab" and the "Biennale of Photography"). Almost no one else was allowed the chance in either case.
[ii] some part of the quid pro quo for this seemed, at least to me, to be the endorsement and proposal contained in the seminar-report for enactment of an official Government of India "Policy on Photography", which would [a] recognize the FCP as the institutional high-ground of all creative photographic practice in the country, through which all government funding to the medium would be funneled, and, [b] officially condemn certain ill-defined streams of photographic practice.
On both counts, I will always claim to have been quite centrally instrumental in bringing these propositions to naught via the next event I created,.. and also (more importantly) the series of writings I did on photography for the Times of India from about the time of these events till some two years later.
... Writings on photography ~ that was another downstream by-product of all the many various happenings I like to link back at least partially to Milestones. Newspapers in Delhi jumped aboard the bandwagon enthusiatically: Satish Sharma began writing for his pal Sadanand Menon, arts-editor of The Economic Times; Vijay Mehta, editor of The Pioneer piggy-backed the portfolio onto his senior correspondent, Amit Prakash; Ratnottama Sengupta, Deputy Arts-Editor of The Times of India deployed me; The Indian Express & The Hindustan Times intermittently put folks I don't remember onto the job for their own pages, and so on and so forth.
It was an unprecedented and incredibly exciting time for creative photographers and photography in Delhi, and helping it all on it's way, along with so much else that had happenned post-Milestones, was the next show I put together, below:
This was perhaps the most successful show I've ever done thus far in terms of the sheer impact it had upon a medium in (at least) Delhi. Not a little part of the luck with this was all about the standing and reputation and professional excellence of the two photographers who agreed to be part of the show with me ~ Ravi Pasricha (at left) and Hemen Sanghvi (centre)... but I may be getting ahead of myself here, since the story's pretty interesting in being slightly important even to the history of photography (again ~ at least) in this city!
Briefly then ~ in 1990, my little family and I moved to a bigger house in a new development on the outskirts of Delhi,... and found ourselves without a telephone for a full one year! With regard to my career as a photographer, this meant that I soon enough had to face up to the issue of how very dispensable I could be as a professional by this little circumstance ~ as in: "Can't get Shankar on the phone???!! Well, call the next chap on the list!"
Not surprisingly, I was outraged and humiliated... and finally reacted very poorly indeed one evening I'm afraid, by taking out my entire photo-stock accumulated over almost ten years of arduous treks and travels, and dumping it in a barrel of water ~ with soy sauce and vinegar.
Hilariously enough however, the very next day found me buying another camera for myself, when I recognized a Leica M3 (dressed up with a klutzy Russian flash-gun!) on offer for about the equivalent of $40/- US amongst a spread of Russian camera gear and other photo-goods at a pavement-shop in Old Delhi. Not quite believing my luck, I first took aboard the notion that the camera was probably just a cheap Russian copy with the "e" and "i" of "Leica" interchanged or some such thing, but handling it left me in no doubt that it was an absolutely super piece of machinery regardless of who'd made it or where it came from, and it seemed to be working just fine!
Then, I stopped and recalled what I'd done about my whole photography career just the evening before and decided to check out how intently fate (and perhaps even the very gods!) was seeking to guide me here. First order of business was therefore to 'bluff' the seller into re-quoting me a price for the camera, "without the flash-gun,".. which unhesitatingly brought down the asking-price about a quarter,.. and then I took a double-handed grip upon my luck of the moment and declared that since the camera seemed a really-really old model (regardless of how well-preserved it may have been) I wouldn't think to bid more than about the equivalent of $20/-,.......... AND THEY LET ME HAVE IT thanksverymuch!!!!! (** see note below)
Other things obviously also happened to my life at the time with the shift of home and slowdown of assignments, of which a key transition came about from meeting Ravi, who operated as a commercial & industrial photographer in addition to running Statfotos, a pro-photo-lab where all sorts of fascinating photographers popped in to get work done and also shoot the breeze on the medium and issues to do with it, with whosoever else happened to be at hand. For the record here: almost all of my earlier lab work as a professional photographer (that is, through the 1980s) was processed and printed at Madan Mahatta's pro-lab.
Ravi and I became close friends, and I soon migrated what little photography work I was still doing to his lab, where I soon discovered Guru, his stone-deaf lab-technician who turned out to be the only printer I've ever worked with who could intuitively understand and produce almost everything I expected of my B/W photography from my negatives.
It obviously didn't take long for me to get down to thinking of photography as a creative medium,... with which I could logically be able to actually do what only I could do, and thereby make myself not so easily 'dispensable' ever again. And so I carefully shot 6 rolls of black and white film with the Leica, examined my results, railroaded Ravi and Hemen into digging into their stock-piles to join me in putting together a good show within a few months, and then got back once again to Mrs. Sridharani at Triveni Kalasangam to have her open Triveni's main "Sridharani Gallery" a week early after the summer-break, just for our show.
Format was simple. As equal partners and good friends, each of us just assumed independent creative freedom and responsibility for our own respective parts of the show (with me coordinating of course). Accordingly, we measured the total length of hanging space available to us in the rectangular gallery and shared that equally, with my images taking up most of the left wall, Hemen's on most of the right wall and Ravi's on the far wall from the entrance, spilling over to the ends of both the left and the right walls.
And wellwellwell! Milestones blitzed Delhi like it had perhaps never been blitzed before by such a 'regular' exhibition of works from local photographers. As a touchstone example of what the response was like ~ of the six copies of the publicity-still that we printed and circulated (above right), at least five were reproduced in top print-publications. And there were interviews, calender entries, critiques and reviews everywhere.
Here are some extracts of what was written about (mainly) the works I showed:
"The exhibition... exhibits works of three innovative photographers, who have overcome constraints of literalness by introducing creative images elevating the medium to an art form, each one retaining his specific signature...
"...Shankar Barua is on a voyage of discovery. To make his images come out stronger, he uses flashes of water colours innovatively on black and white photographs. Stark images such as the man with colourful umbrellas and a pair of shoes with red painted laces, give Barua a specific niche in the world of creative photography in India..."
Neelam Matthews, Hindustan Times, July 6, 1991
"It's a show that rests on some grit, much orginality and a dash of bravado...
"... but probably the most determinedly innovative of the three is Shankar Barua (35).... Using manual cameras to take some very carefully composed, even innocuous looking stills, he has transformed them by selectively overpainting parts of each photograph... A pervasive humour and careful artistry distinguishes his work..."
Gayatri Sinha, Sunday Times of India, July 7, 1991
"The exhibition... deserves serious attention of those whose appreciation of photography is not restricted either to the pure aesthetics of camera-work or to their value as records...
".. Shankar Barua is comparatively more inward looking, and shows a preference for the poetic. He is deliberate in the placement of the objects and in the use of their contrasting textures. He is a fine photographer, and that is why I wonder why he had to hand-colour parts of his works... The practice, I think is not necessary..."
Santo Datta, Indian Express, July 8, 1991
"Of these three photographers, Shankar Barua likes to touch up his prints with colour...
"... I'd add the marmaladed boots as another handsome entry..."
Keshav Malik, Times of India, July 9, 1991
"... The other thing to do with photography is to use it as Shankar Barua does; in the realms of art.... It's there. You will find it in the stark partially hand coloured black and white prints exhibited by Shankar. Images of J&B Whisky advertisements and Andy Warhol flit through your mind trying to connect to Shankar's images..."
Santanu Mitra, Economic Times, July 5, 1991
"If a picture speaks a thousand words then there was a veritable feast of verbiage at Triveni recently...
"... From Shankar Barua's almost pen-and-ink intricate black and white shots embellished with a discreet dash of colour, through Hemen Sanghvi's quiet sepia prints freezing the timeless perspectives of old buildings, to Ravi Pasricha's celebration of life in a kaeidoscope of riotous coulour, the exhibits enthralled and never palled inspite of a definite repitition of subject matter. The ordinariness of Barua's subjects: old boots, worn down shoes, an abandoned basket resting on a nest of twigs, an alley dog asleep framed by the claustrophic wall of the narrow lane, take on an added interest in the artists' treatment of his subject: the angle of the shot; the object he wishes to highlight..."
"... Barua's black and white photographs reveal the latent meaningfulness of everyday objects..."
".. A word about the choice of frames. Obviously much thought had gone into the selection, for the mounts not only blended with the photographs but accentuated them as well. Pasricha's choice for his bright colours was frames of painted monsoon grey. Sanghvi selected wooden frames with a textured, heavy, old look in brown. Barua's prints were mounted on a white backdrop against textured hard-board, faced with glass and neatly buttoned in place with four steel tacks. All were simple, but effective."
Rehana Sen, Indian Express Weekend, July 20, 91
(**And what of the Leica? Well, part of the story of why it came to me so cheap seems to have been that it had probably lain in the attic or trunk of an unappreciative owner or inheritor for decades,.. and so the shutter-curtains of rubber-faced fabric had stiffened in situ,.. thereby developing cracks and pin-pricks after I'd shot not more than about 15 rolls of film with it! Value for money? Maybe!)
*So now, here's the little 'history' bit about the whole show by my reckoning:
To begin with, what Milestines most certainly did almost instantly was spur a very substantial and entirely unprecedented domino-like tide of photography shows in Delhi over the next several years. The first amongst these were by Ashok Dilwali (who potted a suddenly-vacant slot at the same Sridharani Gallery for just about a month after us, when he visited our show-opening) and Ashim Ghosh (who scored three days for a show of his own in the Committee Room of the India International Centre on almost the same dates as our show, when he twigged what we were upto from interactions with us all at Statfotos, several weeks earlier).
The biggest and most important reaction to Milestones however came, I believe, from our common good friend and social-landscape Photographer & Commentator, Satish Sharma ~ whom we'd somehow neglected to invite into our show. What he did at the time may not be associated by many folks with a reaction to the breakthrough success of our show, but I will always believe otherwise... for very many good reasons.
So, very briefly, a couple of Satish's photographs had recently been curated alongwith works from several top Indian news-photographers by a pair of German individuals, into a show of Indian photography that had been 'touring' Germany since then. Now, the Government of India at the same time happened to be developing the "Festival of India in Germany", and so the curators of Satish's show petitioned for it to be included in the Festival (for a fat fee of course), but were politely declined,.. just like zillions of proposals before and after them.
This little matter was then stirred up by Satish amongst the news-photographer and reporter community in Delhi into a massive case splashed across the newspapers, of covert government censorship of a creative art-form, and pressure was brought to bear upon the Minister for Culture at the time, Mr. Arjun Singh, to redress the situation. Forced into a corner by what in the hulabaloo was now coalescing into a pretty powerful sort of "News-Photographers Union", Mr Singh at first sought to adroitly slip through by commiting to officially commission a brand-new show of photography for the Festival,... and this time, it was his offer that was declined, on the basis that this was just another manifestation of attempted official censorship ~ i.e. by selective inclusion of participants and images instead of selective exclusion.
In the end, a quiet deal was eventually struck between the news-photographers and the minister, with many little wheels within wheels to it. Of that I am certain.
What's out in the open is that the cabal of Satish and his news-photographer pals registered themselves soon after this as a non-profit association of professionals called the "Forum of Contemporary Photographers" (FCP), whose first order of business was to discreetly translate the minister's equally discreet peace-offering of a seed-grant of Rs. 5,00,000/- into a two-day "National Seminar on Photography", for discussing and cogitating upon grave matters of the medium a few months later at the India International Centre.
There was approximately no pre-publicity at all for the event and not many photographers from outside the cabal were invited to that national seminar. A list of "photographers who could not attend" published in the seminar-report later also made quite clear that everyone and anyone else was uninvited.. like, for example, me! But I popped in anyway!!
The line-up around the table was pretty fascinating, with the new office-bearers of the new FCP flanked by government officials of the culture ministry taking up the head of the conference table. Satish was obviously there too, bobbing about and interjecting and holding forth every now and again as General Secretary and prime-mover of the new enterprise. Several members shuffled quietly about the room (and even out onto the window ledge!), shooting images of the entire proceedings from every conceivable angle for history and posterity. A few of those small-town photographers (and art-college teachers generally) whom we all knew from their lifelong commitment to photographing tribals and suchlike on the peripheries of their neighbourhoods, had also been invited, and enthusiastically took their turns to demand more government 'support' and 'recognition' for the medium. A couple of senior photographers and office-bearers of the "Advertising and Industrial Photographers Association" (AIPA) were also present, but remained aloof from FCP membership and the mainstream discussions of the meet, choosing instead to only draw attention to IPR issues.
Extracts from the minutes of the proceedings of that national seminar (including one version of the key comment I made several times) are on public record in the seminar-report, but here's a bit of my understanding of some of what was sought to be achieved, and what eventually came of that.
[i] top order of business was of course to milk the Government of India's Ministry for Culture to the degree possible. Accordingly, by the time the FCP pretty much fizzled out some two years later, every member had participated in, and been compensated for participating in, at least two major government-funded photography projects ("Project Punjab" and the "Biennale of Photography"). Almost no one else was allowed the chance in either case.
[ii] some part of the quid pro quo for this seemed, at least to me, to be the endorsement and proposal contained in the seminar-report for enactment of an official Government of India "Policy on Photography", which would [a] recognize the FCP as the institutional high-ground of all creative photographic practice in the country, through which all government funding to the medium would be funneled, and, [b] officially condemn certain ill-defined streams of photographic practice.
On both counts, I will always claim to have been quite centrally instrumental in bringing these propositions to naught via the next event I created,.. and also (more importantly) the series of writings I did on photography for the Times of India from about the time of these events till some two years later.
... Writings on photography ~ that was another downstream by-product of all the many various happenings I like to link back at least partially to Milestones. Newspapers in Delhi jumped aboard the bandwagon enthusiatically: Satish Sharma began writing for his pal Sadanand Menon, arts-editor of The Economic Times; Vijay Mehta, editor of The Pioneer piggy-backed the portfolio onto his senior correspondent, Amit Prakash; Ratnottama Sengupta, Deputy Arts-Editor of The Times of India deployed me; The Indian Express & The Hindustan Times intermittently put folks I don't remember onto the job for their own pages, and so on and so forth.
It was an unprecedented and incredibly exciting time for creative photographers and photography in Delhi, and helping it all on it's way, along with so much else that had happenned post-Milestones, was the next show I put together, below:
In Search of The Avant-Garde ~ a Dynamic Exposition of Photography Projected on Screen
(India International Centre / Auditorium & Committee Room / August 1-2, 1992)
This event still stands as one of the largest interactive photography-related meets to ever be held in Delhi, packing the IIC auditorium to overflowing across four sessions over two days. Participants invited to make presentations included India's top image-bank of the time, the country's largest photography membership organization, two of the top AV units, and twelve full-time photographers.
A few thousand images were projected before the gathering via a total of up to 17 slide-projectors at a time.
At one level, this event can be seen in logical continuum to Milestones, but a good part of it's genesis in my mind also lay in personal reactions to the FCP's National Seminar (see above). On the one hand, I really liked the relative gravitas of the IIC as a venue, alongwith the whole notion of headbanging seminars & conferences beyond just exhibitions & shows. On the other hand, I think I also felt quite personally threatened and a bit angry too, as an emerging creative-photographer, by the whole business of the FCP's projecting news-photographers as the vanguard of the country's creative photography, and that sinister proposal for an official Government of India "Policy on Photography" which would condemn certain ill-defined streams of practice.
Actually, some sort of definition of some of the sorts of photography sought to be condemned seemed to emerge in the national seminar from a lot of derogatory comments and observations regarding "unconcerned photographers misusing a powerful medium to make just pretty pictures", and also the seemingly cardinal crimes of indulging in "image-manipulation" and "Romanticism" with one's images.
Part of what fascinated me about the whole business was in fact this whole matter of categorizing and condemning certain sorts of images without presenting a single actual example throughout the entire proceedings of what exactly such images looked like. In fact, not a single photographic image of any sort at all (whether condemned or eulogized) was presented before the FCP's National Seminar on Photography.
As you'd expect, I thought I could do better, and I do believe I did. But one often has to lose a battle to win a war.
We'd of course invited the FCP and several of it's members to join In Search of the Avant Garde with presentations, but were declined. In fact, the FCP's membership was unofficially issued a whip to boycott partcipation, and so just a few of them came in,.. and sat silently through the two-day event right at the back of the hall.
They were there to witness a slightly embarassing event which occurred on the first day, when the India International Photographic Council utilized it's presentation slot partially to launch an ideological assault on the FCP and it's covert agenda. And they were also there to view my own personal riposte to the FCP's agenda, innocuously cloaked as a simple series of images openly daring condemnation as"pretty pictures", "Romanticism" and "image-manipulation" (entirely optical and in-camera, like the flowers on my photography page - see top of page for link).
To me, it was like a little personal war I had no choice but to fight, and I therefore even carried this personal agenda forward into my writings on Photography for The Times of India, India's top english newspaper, over the next couple of years...
... and by these means, and the work of so many other good folks who also stood up to be counted in their own different ways, the FCP and it's agenda of those bad old days was eventually brought to a grinding halt within less than two years of it's formation.
So then ~ where's the battle we lost? Well, [a] not a single photograph exists or was every taken of this single largest interactive photography event to ever be held in Delhi, even though there were dozens of photographers of all description (including several of the FCP's news-photographer members, with their huge bags of gear held firmly between their feet) present through both days!!, [b] press reportage of the event was almost totally blacked-out, and [c] I was personally blacklisted as a photographer by many clients I shared with members of the FCP,.. and therefore sort of retired entirely from photography within just about a year after this event....
There was however, one overview of the event which the FCP could not block from the front-page of the India International Centre's next internal 'Diary'.
Here's that text:
India International Centre Diary (Vol. VI No. 4 / August 1992)
In Search of a Visual Language
__________________
PHOTOGRAPHY: In Search of the Avant-Garde
A Dynamic Exposition of Photography Projected on Screen 1-2 August.
_______________
It was one of the most amazing events in photography to have happened in Delhi or elsewhere for some time. A dozen Delhi based photographers who had exhibited their works during the previous year, two audio-visual agencies, a leading photostockist, and a premier representative organisation like the India International Photographic Council were assembled and curated together, using an audio-visual format, for a two-day presentation.
The fact that every photographer prepared a special package of his work and that on both days the IlC's main auditorium was packed to capacity with a keen audience highlighted the genuine and growing interest in photography and is a clear signal for anyone who is listening that the medium is poised on a new threshold of activity and importance in India and needs to be taken seriously. It was the IIC and Destination Traveller who co-sponsored the two-day event. But, for having actualised it, the young photographer Shankar Barua (along with his wife Poonam) who performed the combined roles of impressario/curator/letter-writer/technical expert needs to be congratulated.
The roll call of photographers who showed their works was impressive-including Avinash Pasricha (who also chaired the proceedings on the two days), Swapan Biswas (a lecturer in the College of Art, Delhi), Hemen Sanghvi (an architect), Ravi Pasricha (industrial and commercial photographer), Ashim Ghosh (corporate photographer), Bhaskar Mukerjee (commercial photographer and tutor of photography), Sanjay Kumar (official photographer for the Sangeet Natak Akademi), Tirtha Das Gupta (photo officer in the Indian Agricultural Research Institute), and Prabuddha Das Gupta (fashion and advertising photographer). Photographers Satish Sharma and Sadanand Menon did not show any work but chose to initiate a debate by articulating their concerns on photography as a medium as well as on the contemporary trends in its practice.
Clubbed along with this was a series of audio-visual presentations by Ajai Lal (regarded as the foremost audio-visual producerin the country) who presented a 3-screen, 9-projector programme which had been specially made for the India pavilion at the Barcelona Expo; the India International Photographic Council's sampling of the work of its distinguished members; and Radhika Singh's presentation of the parameters of stock-photo marketing based on her experience with running 'Fotomedia', one of the most well-stocked photo agencies in the country today.
What these two afternoons of packed activity managed to communicate at once was the sheer prolixity of modes and subjects that is engaging contemporary photographers and the way in which, slowly, right before our eyes, the medium is taking on distinctly new shapes.
Sadanand Menon
**[note: the actual invitation/flyers for In Search of the Avant Garde, of which a printer proof is reproduced above, were actually black-on-black]
(India International Centre / Auditorium & Committee Room / August 1-2, 1992)
This event still stands as one of the largest interactive photography-related meets to ever be held in Delhi, packing the IIC auditorium to overflowing across four sessions over two days. Participants invited to make presentations included India's top image-bank of the time, the country's largest photography membership organization, two of the top AV units, and twelve full-time photographers.
A few thousand images were projected before the gathering via a total of up to 17 slide-projectors at a time.
At one level, this event can be seen in logical continuum to Milestones, but a good part of it's genesis in my mind also lay in personal reactions to the FCP's National Seminar (see above). On the one hand, I really liked the relative gravitas of the IIC as a venue, alongwith the whole notion of headbanging seminars & conferences beyond just exhibitions & shows. On the other hand, I think I also felt quite personally threatened and a bit angry too, as an emerging creative-photographer, by the whole business of the FCP's projecting news-photographers as the vanguard of the country's creative photography, and that sinister proposal for an official Government of India "Policy on Photography" which would condemn certain ill-defined streams of practice.
Actually, some sort of definition of some of the sorts of photography sought to be condemned seemed to emerge in the national seminar from a lot of derogatory comments and observations regarding "unconcerned photographers misusing a powerful medium to make just pretty pictures", and also the seemingly cardinal crimes of indulging in "image-manipulation" and "Romanticism" with one's images.
Part of what fascinated me about the whole business was in fact this whole matter of categorizing and condemning certain sorts of images without presenting a single actual example throughout the entire proceedings of what exactly such images looked like. In fact, not a single photographic image of any sort at all (whether condemned or eulogized) was presented before the FCP's National Seminar on Photography.
As you'd expect, I thought I could do better, and I do believe I did. But one often has to lose a battle to win a war.
We'd of course invited the FCP and several of it's members to join In Search of the Avant Garde with presentations, but were declined. In fact, the FCP's membership was unofficially issued a whip to boycott partcipation, and so just a few of them came in,.. and sat silently through the two-day event right at the back of the hall.
They were there to witness a slightly embarassing event which occurred on the first day, when the India International Photographic Council utilized it's presentation slot partially to launch an ideological assault on the FCP and it's covert agenda. And they were also there to view my own personal riposte to the FCP's agenda, innocuously cloaked as a simple series of images openly daring condemnation as"pretty pictures", "Romanticism" and "image-manipulation" (entirely optical and in-camera, like the flowers on my photography page - see top of page for link).
To me, it was like a little personal war I had no choice but to fight, and I therefore even carried this personal agenda forward into my writings on Photography for The Times of India, India's top english newspaper, over the next couple of years...
... and by these means, and the work of so many other good folks who also stood up to be counted in their own different ways, the FCP and it's agenda of those bad old days was eventually brought to a grinding halt within less than two years of it's formation.
So then ~ where's the battle we lost? Well, [a] not a single photograph exists or was every taken of this single largest interactive photography event to ever be held in Delhi, even though there were dozens of photographers of all description (including several of the FCP's news-photographer members, with their huge bags of gear held firmly between their feet) present through both days!!, [b] press reportage of the event was almost totally blacked-out, and [c] I was personally blacklisted as a photographer by many clients I shared with members of the FCP,.. and therefore sort of retired entirely from photography within just about a year after this event....
There was however, one overview of the event which the FCP could not block from the front-page of the India International Centre's next internal 'Diary'.
Here's that text:
India International Centre Diary (Vol. VI No. 4 / August 1992)
In Search of a Visual Language
__________________
PHOTOGRAPHY: In Search of the Avant-Garde
A Dynamic Exposition of Photography Projected on Screen 1-2 August.
_______________
It was one of the most amazing events in photography to have happened in Delhi or elsewhere for some time. A dozen Delhi based photographers who had exhibited their works during the previous year, two audio-visual agencies, a leading photostockist, and a premier representative organisation like the India International Photographic Council were assembled and curated together, using an audio-visual format, for a two-day presentation.
The fact that every photographer prepared a special package of his work and that on both days the IlC's main auditorium was packed to capacity with a keen audience highlighted the genuine and growing interest in photography and is a clear signal for anyone who is listening that the medium is poised on a new threshold of activity and importance in India and needs to be taken seriously. It was the IIC and Destination Traveller who co-sponsored the two-day event. But, for having actualised it, the young photographer Shankar Barua (along with his wife Poonam) who performed the combined roles of impressario/curator/letter-writer/technical expert needs to be congratulated.
The roll call of photographers who showed their works was impressive-including Avinash Pasricha (who also chaired the proceedings on the two days), Swapan Biswas (a lecturer in the College of Art, Delhi), Hemen Sanghvi (an architect), Ravi Pasricha (industrial and commercial photographer), Ashim Ghosh (corporate photographer), Bhaskar Mukerjee (commercial photographer and tutor of photography), Sanjay Kumar (official photographer for the Sangeet Natak Akademi), Tirtha Das Gupta (photo officer in the Indian Agricultural Research Institute), and Prabuddha Das Gupta (fashion and advertising photographer). Photographers Satish Sharma and Sadanand Menon did not show any work but chose to initiate a debate by articulating their concerns on photography as a medium as well as on the contemporary trends in its practice.
Clubbed along with this was a series of audio-visual presentations by Ajai Lal (regarded as the foremost audio-visual producerin the country) who presented a 3-screen, 9-projector programme which had been specially made for the India pavilion at the Barcelona Expo; the India International Photographic Council's sampling of the work of its distinguished members; and Radhika Singh's presentation of the parameters of stock-photo marketing based on her experience with running 'Fotomedia', one of the most well-stocked photo agencies in the country today.
What these two afternoons of packed activity managed to communicate at once was the sheer prolixity of modes and subjects that is engaging contemporary photographers and the way in which, slowly, right before our eyes, the medium is taking on distinctly new shapes.
Sadanand Menon
**[note: the actual invitation/flyers for In Search of the Avant Garde, of which a printer proof is reproduced above, were actually black-on-black]
Explorations in Digital Imaging (Siddharth Hall / Max Mueller Bhavan / September 2-14, 2000)
In late August 2000, I unexpectedly received a heads-up on an old conversation from nearly a year before then with Mr. Tilmann Waldraff, Director of Max Mueller Bhavan (Goethe Institute), New Delhi, India. It was the inimitable Anita Singh calling from Tilo's office, inquiring after how things were progressing with regard to a show of printed digital imaging that we'd speculated (I thought!) on doing together in their gallery through early September 2000 ~ i.e. just over a month away!!
By the time of the call, I'd actually forgotten entirely about that conversation at a get-together with filmmakers that we'd put together at his institution (MMB) almost a year earlier. However, the opportunity was too intriguing to just respond to Anita with an "Oops! Let's forget about it because I forgot about it!!"
So, I offered to call back in a day or two after drawing responses from some of the artists we connect with in Delhi (and one in NYC), and was more than delighted to do so the very next day with an "OK"!
Now, anyone and everyone who has ever had to marshal creative folks and their creative works into a joint endeavour has probably experienced how hellish this can be, and will appreciate how it may indeed have proven lucky to us in the end that just a month remained to put it all together.
At the end of the day, the show was a tremendous success in terms of deploying mostly original works by more than a dozen exciting e-artists from Delhi, and one from New York. And there was plenty of press and television coverage.
However, I missed almost all of it after putting up and opening the show, as my mum suffered a mild stroke and was hospitalized on a visit to my younger brother in Bangalore right about then, and I flew out to spend most of the two weeks lending a hand there till she recovered enough to come home to our place in Delhi for awhile before returning home to Guwahati with my elder brother sometime later, where thank god she recovered quite well.
In late August 2000, I unexpectedly received a heads-up on an old conversation from nearly a year before then with Mr. Tilmann Waldraff, Director of Max Mueller Bhavan (Goethe Institute), New Delhi, India. It was the inimitable Anita Singh calling from Tilo's office, inquiring after how things were progressing with regard to a show of printed digital imaging that we'd speculated (I thought!) on doing together in their gallery through early September 2000 ~ i.e. just over a month away!!
By the time of the call, I'd actually forgotten entirely about that conversation at a get-together with filmmakers that we'd put together at his institution (MMB) almost a year earlier. However, the opportunity was too intriguing to just respond to Anita with an "Oops! Let's forget about it because I forgot about it!!"
So, I offered to call back in a day or two after drawing responses from some of the artists we connect with in Delhi (and one in NYC), and was more than delighted to do so the very next day with an "OK"!
Now, anyone and everyone who has ever had to marshal creative folks and their creative works into a joint endeavour has probably experienced how hellish this can be, and will appreciate how it may indeed have proven lucky to us in the end that just a month remained to put it all together.
At the end of the day, the show was a tremendous success in terms of deploying mostly original works by more than a dozen exciting e-artists from Delhi, and one from New York. And there was plenty of press and television coverage.
However, I missed almost all of it after putting up and opening the show, as my mum suffered a mild stroke and was hospitalized on a visit to my younger brother in Bangalore right about then, and I flew out to spend most of the two weeks lending a hand there till she recovered enough to come home to our place in Delhi for awhile before returning home to Guwahati with my elder brother sometime later, where thank god she recovered quite well.