In the beginning was the click. When the camera was invented, the click was perhaps the most magical of sounds that captured images of ephemeral life around us for posterity. In nearly two centuries since the invention of practical photography (1839 is widely considered as that landmark year), the art has not only undergone massive transformations courtesy ever-changing technology but has now reached a curve where it has been banalized to the point of being boring, ordinary and even uninspired. That’s largely due to the use of photography strictly for recording personal moments of self-appreciation for public consumption, when the intent is to garner 15 minutes of stardom in the virtual world.So, what separates the grain from the chaff, the professional photographer from the every-hour-selfie-photographer? You could say that the former puts a well-studied thought behind his pictures while the latter has nothing but self-aggrandizement as purpose. That may sound oversimplified but it is actually not. One has to look at curated photography exhibitions to understand what makes a photographer and what doesn’t.Vidya Sivadas-curated exhibition, “Off The Record: Meditations on the Photographic Image,” currently on view at the Vadehra Art Gallery in Defence Colony, is one such show that puts the idea before the picture, the brain before the lens. Featuring photographs by artists - Atul Bhalla, Anju Dodiya, M F Husain, Showkat Kathjoo, Krishen Khanna, Juul Kraijer, Susanta Mandal, Babu Eshwar Prasad and Charmi Gada Shah - it presents a series of images about images, that speak about relationship between photography and painting, as also photography and performance art, installation and the moving image. Sivadas says, “We [the gallery] were interested in curating a show and were discussing a photo show and the possible ways of doing it as we don’t have a very big band of photo works. While exploring these approaches, we invited a range of artists who were looking at photo differently, and that included older modernist artists too such as Krishen Khanna and MF Husain, besides several contemporary practitioners.” The images by all these artists are spread out on three floors of the gallery, and even though there is no conscious attempt to string all into a common thread, the continuity of the idea -- of a photographer’s engagement with the medium beyond mere technological -- comes to the fore clearly in all the displays. Says Sivadas, “I was thinking in terms of space, a proper body of work and not just one photo per artist. I didn’t want to just fill up the roster; there could have been other artists too but then, there can be another show as well.”While, on the one hand is Atul Bhalla’s silent homage to various water bodies of Delhi that have now run dry, presenting not just concrete buildings but absence, loss and vitality, on the other is Showkat Kathjoo’s performance pictures on the rotten piles of books in the library of the Srinagar Institute of Music and Fine Arts, which was submerged in the floods last year. Dodiya’s pictures are an enquiry into the art of painting, giving a pigeonhole view of what a painter sees that she hopes to paint or photograph.At the other end of the spectrum are lively, engrossing photo series “Culture of the Streets” (1981-82) by Husain, through which he enquired into the highly animated status of cinema in Tamil Nadu. Among many things, these images capture film posters, banners and cut outs of filmstars, harking back to Husain’s own days as film banner painter in Mumbai (then Bombay), when he was just setting out as an artist. The most disturbing pictures, according to this writer, are those by Dutch artist Juul Kraijer. Her pictures, a coming together of Renaissance portraiture and Surrealism, show rather repulsive creatures caressing a picture perfect model’s face - her pictures have been called uncanny, creepy, among other things and have been well received in the world of art and photography. Says Sivadas, “Juul is a strong, interesting artist and has a certain sensibility that cuts across medium. She has far more famous for her drawings and her human portraits with animals are an interpretation of Greek mythology in a certain way. She does very elaborate shoots with models... she was talking how a photo removes all heirarchy between humans and animals and brings in a sort of parity. It is this idea which gives birth to her images that are so strong conceptually and also have a strange quality. She makes you think.”The blurring of boundaries within the art world caused by medium-related compartmentalization is the hallmark of all pictures in the exhibition. Sivadas feels that the constant back and forth between mediums has helped erase the boundaries. Perhaps, that is why, such post-medium art makes these photographers artists rather than mere intelligent people behind the lens. Off The Record: Meditations on the Photographic Image is on view at Vadehra Art Gallery, D-53, Defence Colony, New Delhi, through November 25, 11 am to 7 pmFollow@ARTINFOIndia
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