Real India in sepia tones

Udaipur-based US photographer Waswo X Waswo is presenting some mystic yet realistic images in sepia tone, clicked by him during 1999-2005.

The ongoing exhibition ‘Maybe removed at will’ comprises stills from his well-known book ‘India Poems: The Photographs’ published in 2006.

This series of over 60 sepia-toned photographs have previously been exhibited in both India and the USA, winning both accolades and brickbats.

However, this time he has updated them conceptually by adding the text that is on the glass of each frame. These words suggest the biases, stereotypes and knee-jerk reactions viewers can bring to an image before they really see it. Installations, a video loop, a few new works and a free storybook complete Waswo’s thought-provoking display.

“The current exhibition is sort of a retrospective. The text on the frames is meant to represent the words that intervene between our eyes and the image. It also represents the biases and prejudices. If the viewer chooses, he or she can get these biases out of their minds or choose to let them intrude. This is the reason for the show’s title,” says Waswo.

All sepia photographs went through a chemical process and were developed by him during 1999-2005. Besides, the show also includes two new works – a large hand-coloured photo that looks like a postcard and stars artist Mithu Sen, and a miniature by R Vijay and Waswo.

The photographs clicked in different and some remote parts of the country are representation of the country at grassroots level with people shot giving myriad expressions. “I have always been interested in traditional, grassroot and often rural landscape and locals. I find a lot more of beauty there. I have never seen myself as a documentary photographer, so I feel no compunction to show contemporary or wealthy India ‘for balance’. I see myself as an artist searching for beauty and a kind of poetry.”

The exhibition venue, Galerie Romain Rolland at Alliance Francaise has a cart full of empty mineral water bottles. An installation, Waswo says the reason for the water botStled relates to the series of miniature paintings that he does in collaboration with the miniaturist R Vijay.

“In those paintings, we often use the water bottle as an ironic symbol. The brand name on the bottle label is ‘YE’ but in fact the intrusion of the plastic bottles is a kind of ‘no’, a negative in regard to the environment. So these water bottles represent commercialism and globalisation.”

Waswo has lived and travelled in India for over 10 years and made Udaipur his home for the past seven years.

The exhibition is on till December 14, between 11 am to
7 pm.