THE REALITY MIRAGE

Paramjot walia

At times photographs act as a mirage by creating a fictional world which seems hopeful when seen within the confines of a frame, but reality maybe suffocating under the labyrinth of these colorful submerging printed stories. The photographs exhibited in ‘Merging/Sub-merging’ show at Art Konsult act as a visual medium targeting a much wider real life spectrum than being merely fictional bling. The show curated by Johny ML and co-ordinated by Shilpi Shankar and Prarthana Tagore displays works of nine contemporary photographers namely Abul Kalam Azad, Anurag Sharma, Chandan Gomes, Deepak John Mathew, Gireesh GV, Partha Seal, Rafeeq Ellias, Vicky Roy and Vinit Gupta. The blue mystical effect in Deepak’s series ‘Doob Gaye Hum..Duba Diya Humne’, shot in Tehri and Haridwar, subtly suggests the human intervention in natural spaces. Vicky Roy’s photograph of fishermen would remind one of the famous Steve McCurry’s iconic ‘Stilt Fishermen’ image shot in Sri Lanka. Clicked at the same spot still holding its individual essence, this photograph was a part of National Geographic Channel’s show series ‘Mission Cover Shot’. Plagued by the quotidian bug, Gireesh GV’s series ‘Decorative soldiers’ depicts freedom fighters as decorative pieces in a public place, questioning whether we actually get inspired by their struggle and strength or ignore them in the name of public art. Curator Johny ML elucidates, “We did not want to capture the changes of reality that take place in the contemporary society through documentary photographs or completely ictionalized images created by photography artists. We wanted a set of photographs that exemplified the merging of realities to shape new realities and at times submerge into the flow of time without leaving any trace at all. We could say that the show ‘Merging/Submerging’ is constituted by a set of visual metaphors that the participating photography artists have captured and altered as per their needs to represent the idea of merging and submerging.” Abul Kalam Azad’s pioneering works break the norms of classical photography and create images that surpass reality, dream and the abstract. He speaks of his own life using personal relationships as a metaphor and treats the changes as images seen through a kaleidoscope. Such kaleidoscopic changes are visible in the works of Chandan Gomes too. While Vinit Gupta assumes an anthropologist’s gaze to capture the merging of tribal realities, Rafeeq Ellias looks at the lives of the creative people who turn physical movement into spatial definitions. Classifications of society happens in many levels for Anurag Sharma where even sky turns into grids in the urban spaces. Partha Seal’s attempt is to see how secular spaces merge with the religious spaces to create ambiguous spaces of loss.