Travelling through pictorial emotions

BLACK AND WHITE

From the dark to the pleasant, the images displayed at Art Heritage narrate an insightful journey of renowned photographer Pablo Bartholomew in the intellectual state of Calcutta (present day Kolkata) through his exhibition ‘The Calcutta Diaries’.

“My grandmother lived in Calcutta so I associate the place with my childhood. During those days, I felt this City is held by time and experienced the same resonance when I went onto the sets of Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khiladi,” says the ex-photojournalist whose has captured images of his grandmother, created a pictorial commentary on the Chinese community, daily street life in Kolkata and a personal interaction with filmmaker Satyajit Ray.

These images in black and white present an insightful biography of the everyday life of the city with glimpses of the tramway; political graffiti contrasted usually against poor and the Bengali culture along with Pablo’s personal take. “Calcutta is a place where one can find the oldest form of transportation such as the hand-pulled rickshaws. The political graffiti, on the other hand, has been on the walls of this City much before it became trendy within the art community. As I navigated through its streets, I saw all these, reacted and photographed them,” shares Pablo.

The reaction is a curation of exhibition which makes the viewer travel through moods of love (Grandmother’s photographs), astonishment (shining mosque in the midst of a slum), energy (transportation forms), disgust (animal imagery) and mirth (Satyajit Ray’s shooting of Shatranj Ke Khiladi).

 What shakes the viewer out of complacency is the way Pablo captures some animals - for instance, a cow being carried on a cart or a monkey staring intently into his lens. “India is not very charitable to animals,” says Pablo who feels, “A cow is considered holy but the way they are mistreated by letting them eat garbage is a contrast to what is preached.”

The film world of Satyajit Ray provides a glimpse into the lighter side of the celebrated filmmaker. Captured by Pablo’s lens, Ray is seen at work - on the sets and even inspecting the film reel in the editing room.

“It was during the time when I went to work with Satyajit Ray on the sets of Shatranj..., first in 1976 and then on subsequent productions as a stills photographer, that I spent a lot of time at the studios around Tollygunj. The stifling feeling on the studio sets drove me to explore the Tangra and Dhapa areas of South Calcutta, photographing the Chinese community − or whatever fragments of them that remained. Brutally mistreated, especially after the hate that developed against them as the ‘enemy’ following the national humiliation of India’s defeat to China in 1962, their exodus from the subcontinent had already begun.”

This anti-China mood is captured in shots of a boy jumping off a roof; small parties being held within the community and even the classic handstand on an iron wheel. The exhibition is on display at Art Heritage Gallery- I and II, Triveni Kala Sangam till January 23, 2013.