JOIN USSeat belts define safety, more so in a city that lives dangerously on its streets. Yet, men and women feel trapped within the confines of that belt, battling their inner urge to break and breath free.
Dramatically visualising the belt as a telling symbol of today’s society caught in myriad rules, laws and customs, the “un(w)rapture” photography exhibition has unfolded here.
The opening frame of a woman masked in a web of seat belts was designed to deliver that message upfront: The resigned acceptance of social norms, forfeiture of all belief in intuition of self. The trio of Jeffrey Butts from paramorphous, photographer AJ Sharma and contemporary danseuse Swapnashree Bhasi had combined well to make that impact and reimagine the seat belt as a symbol of (un)safety.
The picture of “restraint” thus established, the woman’s journey to “release” then gets explained in a flurry of vibrant shots, displayed on white walls atop the sixth floor terrace of the Church Street Social building. The woman could have been any conformist Bangalorean sticking to rules but unknowingly “getting into a rut,” as Sharma put it.
Sharma’s lenses had captured the character’s evolution from an unquestioning denizen to someone who “starts to feel the discomforture” to someone who “realises that she is not allowed to move.” It is then the woman begins the struggle through areas of vulnerability to eventually break free. “The seat belt is used as a metaphor for bondage, systems that restrain,” explained Jeffrey.
Jeffrey and Sharma had brainstormed hard to capture the essence of the seat-belt metaphor. In Swapnashree, the duo found the perfect fit for a photographic model. They relied on a storyboard to finally deliver the message through images, arranged in an anti-clockwise sequence.