Before they became stars

from the archives

Pablo Bartholomew, the name brings back the image of a half-buried dead child of Bhopal Gas Tragedy that happened more than 30 years ago. The photographer, nearly half his present age (he turned 60 recently) then, said, “Memory is a strange thing. We compulsively forget and selectively remember only fragments of the past.”

The aforementioned iconic photograph won him the World Press Photo of the Year in 1984. This wasn’t his first award, or the last. His series on morphine addicts in India won him the World Press Photo award in 1976. In 2014, he was the recipient of the Padma Shri and Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France, in recognition of his enormous work of photography since the 1970s.

In Mumbai recently, he showcased at Sakshi Art Gallery a body of work called 60/60, which, according to him, comprised “60 images which will possibly be the last resurrection, a visual testimony to friends and people in arts who I encountered as I traversed and muddled through life in my early years, in the 70s and 80s.”  

On display at the exhibition were candid and rare black-and-white photographs of young artistes from the world of theatre, cinema and arts.

Young & talented

There were photographs of MPs Shashi Tharoor and Maneka Gandhi on stage during a play in their college days.

There was one of poet, painter and playwright Gieve Patel affectionately holding his daughter, Avaan, in his studio; and of the Kashmiri artist G R Santosh.

There were many from the world of cinema — photos of directors Kumar Sahani, Tinnu Anand, Amjad Khan and Satyajit Ray; Lillete Dubey; late Sayyed Jaffrey and many more.
Before opting for photojournalism, Pablo worked in advertising and as a still photographer in many films, including Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khilari and Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi.

Pablo recalled the days of shooting Amjad Khan (embedded in everyone’s mind as Gabbar Singh in Sholay) while on the sets of the film Shatranj Ke Khilari. “When I met him, he was this soft and sweet man. So wonderful that he would help me photograph the objects used in the sets of Shatranj... He would hold up the background cloth and angle reflectors for me when he had some time off on the set.”

As a photojournalist, Pablo covered conflicts and developments, especially in South Asian countries, and his photographs were published in several international (The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, GEO, The Guardian) as well as Indian publications.

When asked about the changes he had seen as a photographer from then till now, he said, “I am part of the change. It’s not like I got stuck in time and everything changed! Even now the written word continues to dominate the media. Images are used as flat illustrations and no more as narrative images in an in-depth storytelling form that makes or propels a change in people’s minds and behaviour. Yes, newspapers and magazines may seem more visual, but that’s because of the advertisements. Look at the front page of newspapers. They start with a full-page ad. The media, which is supposed to be impartial and a vehicle of information and change, has sold its soul to advertising. That is the real change.”

Last year’s photograph of the corpse of a Syrian refugee baby washed ashore, which revealed the depth of the Syrian refugee crisis, reminded many of the iconic photograph of Bhopal Gas Tragedy.

Pablo’s rejoinder to the observation was, “That image is over 30 years old! In the last 10 years I have shown other sets of images that are even older than what I am now known for. My exhibitions Outside In - A Tale of 3 Cities (my teenage diary), other shows like Bombay - Chronicles of a Past Life, The Calcutta Diaries, and now 60/60, are all about working with my black-&-white archive from the 70s and early 80s.

These haven’t reached the international level yet, but slowly they are getting out there and are being embedded for a younger generation. Yes, I was reminded of my photography by that photo, but there are so many others in the same vein. There was the image of the child and the vulture in Africa, the photo of the girl who slowly sunk into a mudslide in Columbia...”

Pablo Bartholomew signed off with, “Today, since image-recording devices are commonplace, there is more image-making. People are now much used to being photographed. However, that doesn’t mean that they are natural in front of the camera. Look at how people use selfie sticks. That is a performance in itself!”