India’s diverse communities have had their own struggles of being located within the framework of a larger, common national identity. This has most definitely been the case with the Anglo-Indians, most of whom failed to find a place in independent India. After the end of the British rule, a very small number of Anglo-Indians found themselves dealing with a rapidly changing world. Photographer Karan Kapoor, born to actors Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer Kendal, saw traces of the Anglo-Indian world fading — he being part of it himself. In an exhibition titled “Time and Tide,” Kapoor brings together two bodies of work to illustrate the lives Anglo-Indians in India during the 1980s. Choosing Goa, Mumbai (then Bombay) and Kolkata (then Calcutta) as places to work in, Kapoor embarked on a journey that was to become more personal than he had imagined.Kapoor is a commercial photographer in London today and this exhibition at TARQ, Mumbai, is a big departure from his style now. The charm of this work lies in its unmistakable, old-world character. Just like old buildings in Bombay that could not possibly house anything modern — at least to the dreamer’s mind, Kapoor’s photographs reveal an intimacy that only he was granted when photographing the people he did. He always seems like the insider, the resident of the places he wandered in. His Bombay portraits are by far the most alluring of the series as old mansions and old people seem like they’ve decided to stop responding to time. Digital technology hadn’t crept in then and the forced slowness of film only benefitted photographic approach. As the old lady stares at his lens in his photograph from Bombay in 1981, one can’t help but imagine what might have replaced the whole scene there today. Even in his Goa photographs, Kapoor reveals a strong Portuguese influence, which is palpable even today but is largely muted as Goa has now turned into a commercial holiday destination, having lost a lot of its charm to the homogenous nature of capitalism.Kapoor’s interest in the older generation is paired well with his photographs of younger Indians. A lovely photograph of two young boys on a scooter in Goa from 1994 smiling at the lens offers easy insight into their young minds as they wait eagerly to experience an entirely different life from the generation before theirs. Throughout the work, it is clear that Kapoor is interested in the social fabric of that time, even as it thins with the years. His relationship with the people he photographs is casual and this is the most obvious aesthetic in his photographs. An undeniable ease runs common to all the images as his subjects open up their lives and homes to him. Although the images don’t offer a deeper understanding of the community’s issues with identity and recognition, they are fine portraits in themselves, which also reflect Kapoor’s own persona during those years as a portraitist. To most viewers, this series of photographs will seem from a different era and almost unrecognizable as being located in the cities today as we know it. And perhaps this is the most timeless thing about the photographs as they act like keepers of memories rather than trying to actualize the future of the people in them.“Time and Tide” by Karan Kapoor (presented by Tasveer) is showing at TARQ, Mumbai through October 16, 2016, after which it will travel to Bengaluru, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Delhi until April 2017
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