photograph by Ramesh Gandhi
Showing posts with label photographs_others'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photographs_others'. Show all posts
A slide show of some remarkable work by Indian photographers -- from the New York times.
Raghubir Sing's Pavement Mirror Shop, Howrah, West Bengal (1991)
Pattern
I've been making books lately, using a good new book-making book. These two have covers made of cut-down photographs by R. The photograph, called Pattern (the link is to the complete photograph), was silk-screened on handmade paper. He also wrote a poem called Pattern, which was exhibited alongside the photograph:
A PATTERN IS
EVEN IF
ASSYMETRICAL
INTRINSICALLY
AN ORDER
IN CHAOS
LIKE A VAGABOND
BREEZE
PLAYING UPON
THE RESPONSIVE
STRINGS OF A
CARESS-HUNGRY LEAF
TO EXPLODE
INTO RAPTUROUS FRAGMENTS OF AN
UNFORGETTABLE
SYMPHONY
Postcard Vendor, Golconda
Photograph by Ramesh Gandhi
We recently came back from spending a week in Hyderabad. We hardly got out, but did manage to see Golconda Fort and the Qutb Shahi tombs. I had seen the fort many years ago, and had a vague image in my mind of a vast expanse of strewn boulders and cut stones -- but it wasn't like that; it's a ruined but still beautiful hill fort, one of many in India. Golconda was fabulously wealthy, in large part because it is said to have been the ancient world's only known source of diamonds (including the Kohinoor and the Hope diamonds). Here's the wikipedia entry on Golconda, which includes a list of other Indian forts.
As we walked out of the gateway this man approached me with his envelopes of postcards in the crook of his arm. I was holding my camera; I gestured with it and said, "See, I have my camera. I've taken so many pictures, I don't need any postcards." He replied very mildly, "But you may not have these angles; just take a look." By this time R and our friend had emerged. I asked R if he would take the man's photograph. R said, "She would like to take your picture, is that all right?" He said politely, "If Sahib will stand beside me." But he stood against a wall of the fort, and R composed it so beautifully, with the angles of the envelopes and the (modern) stairs. And we bought two sets of photographs, and parted cordially.
Here are some photographs which I took of Golconda, at Flickr.
Photography at Sepia
It's always interesting to see what Sepia Gallery, in New York, is showing. Their current online exhibition has eight photomontages by Vivan Sundaram, called 'Retake of Amrita.' According to the description:
...'Retake of Amrita' ... fuses photography, painting, family history, and autobiography into multi-faceted contemporary fictions. This series of digital photomontages utilizes images from his family archive, including photographs taken by his grandfather Umrao Singh Sher-Gil...; the primary protagonist of the series is his aunt, the painter Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941).
Take a look at the section on past exhibitions as well.
Mahabalipuram
I was going through some old bits of paper and found this poem, which I probably copied from the New Yorker, before I ever imagined that I would be living half an hour's drive from Mahabalipuram. It's by contemporary writer and painter Gulam Mohammed Sheikh:
Mahabalipuram
Man's dream here has a very sharp edge:
teeth-marks of the hungry dead
pit the flanks of domesticated beasts.
Staggering badly, a thirteen-hundred-year-old wind
passes between a sow's sagging dugs
and yesterday's sculptors' rough fingers,
straining to sink inside, are tugged
into the spotted feathers of hens, purposelessly alive.
Chameleons slumber at ease in the belly of rubbish
and
slime-covered frogs poke obscene fun at God
who sits exhausted on the steps;
crabs
peeping through a cypress's dry skin
giggle like fish,
and there,
fallen like a raw black rock
on a clump of wild flowers,
idle Satan
yawns and writhes awake.--Gulam Mohammed Sheikh (from the Gujarati)
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