It can seem like it's the same image every time - the poverty-stricken innocent child, covered in the grime of daily life, nothing but the pure whites of his eyes glinting in the darkness of his forgotten third-world country. That's certainly what one has come to expect when low-income nations are presented through photography (usually taken by Westerners and shown to Westerners). But "Focus on South Asian Photography: Recent Works" at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University puts a completely different spin on the now-hackneyed topic of exotic foreign countries.
The tiny collection hugs the back wall in a larger exhibit called "Overlapping Realms: Arts of the Islamic World and India." It presents six recent pieces by important South Asian photographers. There is Raghubir Singh's piece, "Wall Painting, Bundi, Rajasthan," which is a blunt commentary on the collision of the ancient culture of India and the new urban lifestyle: A car door rudely interrupts a traditional Indian wall painting while a man in an urban back alley stands in the reflection of the car's window. The car is an "Ambassador's Car," the first kind of car made in India, which is referred to by Singh himself as "a part of the Indian earth." The image speaks volumes about the conglomeration of old and new, as traditional artwork is juxtaposed with an image typically associated with contemporary street photography.
Ketaki Sheth's "No Parking, Bhuleshwar, Bombay (Mumbai)" (2004) is a technically beautiful image of a motor scooter parked on the street with a mother and child huddled on the sidewalk behind it. Unlike the typical image of people on the streets of a foreign country, here the subjects are given a bit of privacy, as the scooter obscures them. It's as if Sheth is giving the viewer a glimpse into this private moment, while still preserving the dignity of the subjects.
Dayanita Singh has a visually poignant piece prominently displayed in the center of the exhibit. "Visitors at Anand Bhavan, Allahabad" (2000) was taken at the Nehru house, (now a museum) in Indira Gandhi's bedroom. Singh creates an intimate portrait of Gandhi (no relation to Mahatma) even in her absence. The camera focuses on the arrangement of furniture inside the room - a bed, a bookshelf and a mirrored dresser. It catches the reflection of visitors to the room in the dresser doors, giving them a somewhat ethereal quality. Hints of personality creep out from every corner. The quilt sits neatly on the bed while the collection of books leans on the shelf. The image is intensely voyeuristic, in that the visitors, unaware of the picture being taken of them, are peering into the personal space of a stranger from the outside.
Nasreen Mohamedi's "Untitled" (1972) is a break from the rest of the show, in that it is a far more abstract interpretation of the subject at hand. The zoomed-in image of threads on a loom has a nice geometric design aesthetic to it. Even so, Mohamedi manages to execute her technique well, pulling out bright highlights while preserving a truly black tone.
Vivan Sundaram's archival digital pigment print, "Bourgeois Family: Mirror Faces" (2001), is a fascinating image that draws the viewer right in next to its subjects. Sundaram uses old images from the archives of his grandfather, an amateur photographer himself. The final product is a montage image featuring assorted Sundaram family members gazing at themselves in mirrors. Sundaram's grandmother, mother, aunt, grandfather and his infant self all appear in the picture, locked in playful, interminable gazes with themselves in the mirrors. Even though the image is a composite, meaning the figures are taken from separate images, each character in the pseudo-storyboard seems vaguely aware of the others. It is a commentary on family dynamics and the role of the generation gap.
Though every piece in the show is well-composed, what makes the exhibit particularly attractive is its departure from the starkly upsetting themes that come out of these more exotic settings, which tend to desensitize the audience. Here we see a true representation of South Asia through a South Asian's eyes.
Because these artists are immersed in the culture, they present what might be considered a more honest viewpoint. The images are so ordinary and mundane, but they become more relatable and more effective in conveying a story. The pictures are not just "good pictures" because the photographers were lucky enough to have access to a certain kind of subject matter. These are technically stunning photos that are conceptually interesting and can hold their own, even out of context. The images not only validate the photographers as true artists with vision, but perhaps can facilitate a better, more useful kind of cultural understanding.
