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Charmi Gada Shah and Sujith SN at Vadehra Art Gallery

August 28, 2013•Art, Photography

Ipshita Sen of Saffronart shares a note on the current exhibitions at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi

New York: After a long hot summer, Vadehra Art gallery in New Delhi, welcomed the new art season with cutting edge solo exhibitions by artists Charmi Gada Shah & Sujith SN. The exhibitions are presented as part of the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art’s (FICA) Emerging Artist Award 2011, shared by the two artists.

Charmi Gada Shah, A House on Joshi Lane, 2013

Charmi Gada Shah, A House on Joshi Lane, 2013. Image Credit: http://vadehraart.com/exhibition/viewDetails/109/3161

Charmi Gada Shah, a Mumbai based artist shows the underlying beauty in the undervalued and the forgotten to the audience through her aesthetic lens . Her solo show, titled “Neighbourhood Souvenirs”, includes work that can be defined as ‘architectural sculptures’, painstakingly created with construction debris around her Mumbai neighbourhood; salvaged wood, concrete blocks and plaster.

Charmi Gada Shah, Interior of an Abandoned Room, 2013

Charmi Gada Shah, Interior of an Abandoned Room, 2013. Image Credit: http://vadehraart.com/exhibition/viewDetails/109/3164

“It is a slow process that captures the degradation and loss of a particular time, architecture and lifestyle,” said Shah.

Her innovative re-constructs of broken interiors and once standing architecture, in exquisitely detailed and three dimensional miniature models, reveal untold stories and resonate stories of a forgotten past. Her work powerful in character, emanates the emotion of loss, instigating one to remember and celebrate the rich elements of a lost past.

Charmi Gada Shah, Still Life of a Landscape, 2010

Charmi Gada Shah, Still Life of a Landscape, 2010. Image Credit: http://vadehraart.com/exhibition/viewDetails/109/3167

“A city has its own character and globalization tends to remove these differences and introduce a similitude in the city. My work speaks of this loss of cultural moorings.”

 Sujith SN’s exhibition of watercolors titled “Psalms of an Invisible River” speaks in a dialect of Holbeinesque metaphors and meanings. His large-scale paper works, radiate a poetic and apocalyptic oeuvre. The undercurrent of his work communicates with an audience through the metaphor of an invisible river, as the title suggests. His work is narrative and conveys the underlying message of humanity’s relationship with the world and it’s other inhabitants. The invisible river that the artist illustrates could be any of the hundreds of forgotten and misused rivers that fertilize the Indian soil. His work thus portrays a double-edged metaphor, wherein one can relate it to the people and lives that go unseen and forgotten under the unappealing humdrum of urbanization.

Sujith SN, Psalms of an (In)visible River, 2013

Sujith SN, Psalms of an (In)visible River, 2013. Image Credit: http://vadehraart.com/exhibition/viewDetails/108/3145?pages=1

“For the last two years I have been working on a body of watercolors that examine the concept of ‘what makes a city?’ from a different lens. The river is an important motif because civilizations and urbanization often takes place on the banks of a river. Very often the river changes its color and direction as a result of this so-called civilization,” says Sujith.

Sujith SN, Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom III, 2013

Sujith SN, Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom III, 2013. Image Credit: http://vadehraart.com/exhibition/viewDetails/108/3155?pages=1

Both the artists bring forth the notion of reviving a forgotten grey past and provide the audience with a lens to see perspective and beauty in the hidden and undervalued.

Sujith SN, Testimony, 2012

Sujith SN, Testimony, 2012. Image Credit: http://vadehraart.com/exhibition/viewDetails/108/3152?pages=1

Charmi Gada Shah has acquired her Bachelors in Fine Art from the Raheja School of Art in Mumbai, and further pursued her masters in Fine Arts at The Chelsea School of Art in London. She is the recipient of the ‘Promising Artist Award from Art India and India Habitat Centre in 2009. She currently lives and works in Mumbai.

Sujith SN has acquired his Bachelors in Fine Art from the College of Fine Art, Trissur and Masters in Fine Arts at the Sarojini Naidu School of Fine Art, Performing Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad. He currently lives and works in Mumbai and Kerala.

The exhibitions are on until September 12. For more information click here.

Raja Ravi Varma’s Oleographs: The Making of a National Identity

January 23, 2013•Art, Collectibles

Riddhi Siddhi Ganpati

Raja Ravi Varma
Riddhi Siddhi Ganpati

Manjari Sihare shares some insights about Raja Ravi Varma’s oleographs

New York: This week, The Story features a curated selection from the vintage print archive of well known advertising guru, Cyrus Oshidar. Among these is an eclectic selection of oleographs by India’s first modern artist, Raja Ravi Varma. Ravi Varma (1848-1906) is credited for many-a-firsts: probably the first Indian artist to master perspective and the use of the oil medium; the first to use human models to illustrate Hindu gods and goddesses; the first Indian artist to become famous, before him painters and craftsmen were largely unidentified; and the first to make his work available not just to the rich elite but also to common people by way of his oleographs.

Even while catering to a specific class of patrons with his oil paintings, the artist harbored an underlying concern to make his works accessible to the so-called common man in the hope that it would help the general populace cultivate artistic values and draw inspiration from the religious figures and Pauranic episodes represented in the works. The master artist’s biography in Malayalam by Balakrishnan Nair further elaborates this point. It records an exchange between Ravi Varma and a Brahmin scholar at his studio in Kilimanoor, Kerala. The artist had asked a bystander for his opinion of a certain painting, and the scholar argued on the pretext of how could the artist expected a commoner express an opinion on a work of art? “True” said Ravi Varma, “these people do not have the means to get the pictures painted, but who knows if in the time of their children, these very pictures now painted for Maharajas and nobles will not become their property as well, and find their way into museums. I have heard that there are public galleries in Western countries.”

The idea of printing and distributing oleographs was given to Ravi Varma by Sir T. Madhava Rao, former Dewan of Travancore and later Baroda, in a letter in the 1880s which read: “There are many friends who are desirous of possessing your works. It would be hardly possible for you, with only a pair of hands, to meet such a large demand. Send, therefore, a few of your select works to Europe and have them oleographed. You will thereby not only extend your reputation, but will be doing a real service to the country.” At the time, Ravi Varma had promised his friend and patron that he would give his suggestion his earnest deliberation, and although it took the artist nearly a decade, he did so eventually.

Ravi Varma Press Shri Ram Janki

Ravi Varma Press
Shri Ram Janki

The Ravi Varma Lithographic Press was started in 1894 in Bombay, a carefully chosen location, for the expediency of importing machinery from Germany and distributing the prints. Ravi Varma sought the partnership of a local entrepreneur, Govardhandas Khataumakhanji in this venture. Additionally he solicited the services of German technicians for the Press. It is worth noting that original suggestion in the letter of T. Madhava Rao was to send works to Europe to be oleographed, but what Ravi Varma eventually did was to set up a press himself employing Europeans to do the job for him in his homeland.

Oleography was a comparatively new form of printing then, mastered by an Englishman, named George Boxter in 1835. It came into commercial use by 1860, but was already an exhausted force by the end of the century in Europe. In India, until Ravi Varma’s prints, oleography was used for gaudy ‘calendar art’ and commodity packaging. In the context of fine art, it is essentially a method of reproducing an oil painting on paper in such a manner that the exact colors and brushstrokes textures are duplicated. This litho-printing (stone printing) thus requires as many litho-stones as there are colors and tones in a painting. Oleo is the Latin for oil, which helps to explain the word.

Raja Ravi Varma Lakshmi and Saraswati

Raja Ravi Varma
Lakshmi and Saraswati

It is commonplace that Raja Ravi Varma is vastly celebrated. In the year following his death (1907), the inaugural issue of Modern Review, a monthly magazine which emerged as an important forum for Indian Nationalist intelligentsia celebrated Varma as “the greatest artist of modern India, a nation builder who showed the moral courage of a gifted ‘high-born’ in taking up the ‘degrading profession of painting’ and displaying a remarkable ability to improve upon a received idea; to grasp a situation clearly and to act upon it swiftly.” Varma projected these characteristics many-a-times throughout his illustrious career.

The period of production of Ravi Varma’s oleographs coincided with the rise of Calcutta as a rapidly expanding urban center, both politically and culturally. The print medium became the ideal channel for the wide circulation of images and ideas to the general populace. Correspondingly in Western India, Bombay and Poona emerged as the two major centres for mass print production. Some important presses of the time included the Poona Chitrashala Press, Bombay City Press and Bombay New Press.  The mass prints mainly represented Indian’s past ethos inspired by the two main epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. This mass production made information available to one and all, helped forge a national identity in modern India, creating a unified visual culture – a culture that was the need of the hour in a country where the dialect changed every 5 kilometers.

MV Dhurandhar Vishnu

MV Dhurandhar
Vishnu

No popular print maker or printing press at the time could match up to Ravi Varma in reputation. Varma is known to have worked with two German technicians, chief among whom was a gentleman named Schleizer, to whom the artist eventually sold his press. He was also assisted by a group of Indian artists such as M.V. Dhurandhar, M.A. Joshi and his brother, Raja Raja Varma.

Oshidhar’s collection on The Story includes a print by Dhurandhar, who was a famous artist in his own right, known for his stint as the first Indian director of the Sir J. J. School of Art in Bombay.

Raja Ravi Varma Shrimad Guru Adi Shankaracharya

Raja Ravi Varma
Shrimad Guru Adi Shankaracharya

The first picture printed at Varma’s press is said to be The Birth of Shakuntala. This was followed by an array of images of gods from the Hindu pantheon, including Lakshmi, Saraswati, Ganpati, and Vishnu and his avatars such as Rama and Krishna. Other images included those of revered gurus and saints such as Adi Shankaracharya and Vaishanava Guru. We also see extensive series of oleographs representing women figures from Hindu mythology such as Damayanti, Menaka, Shakuntala, and Rambha. View Oshidar’s selection on The Story.

The phenomenal popularity of Ravi Varma’s oleographs has been spoken and written about extensively. According to his Malayalam biography, “His success in this enterprise has far exceeded his anticipations. There are few cultured well-to-do houses in Hindustan, from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas, in which his pictures are not found, and his name is known all over the land, from the highest to the lowest.”

Visiting the Kochi Muziris Biennale 2012

December 23, 2012•Art

Yamini Telkar of Saffronart shares her experience of attending India’s first biennale in Kochi

Entrance to the Kochi Muziris Biennale12/12/12

Entrance to the Kochi Muziris Biennale
12/12/12

New Delhi: My trip from Delhi to Kochi for the opening ceremony of the Biennale was besieged with delays and it took me the entire day to get there. I thought I would have missed the opening ceremony, which was scheduled to start at 4.30 pm, but of course it was a gross miscalculation on my part, as the spectacle had just started at 7.00 pm, so I managed to catch most of it. However unlike any Art Fair events, where one exclusively encounters the art community, this was an open-for-all event so it was difficult to find artists, gallerists,  especially if one walked in late, like me! But I managed to meet most of the art world in the beautiful heritage restaurants and walking around the picturesque Fort Kochi.

Aspin Wall Hall

Aspinwall Hall

The next day, recharged, I set about visiting the venues. What really helped me plan it was advise from friends who had fumbled along, so with timely interventions I really managed to view all the works spread across 5 venues: Aspinwall Hall, a 19th century sprawling spice warehouse which housed most of the installations; Pepper Hall; Mandalay House in Jew Town; and 2 other venues, which were not named.

Installation by Sudarshan Shetty

Installation by Sudarshan Shetty

Installation by Subodh Gupta

Installation by Subodh Gupta

And as already reported by the media I was unable to see quite a few works which were still in the process of being installed.

Installation by L. N. Tallur

Installation by L. N. Tallur

Installation by Anant Joshi

Installation by Anant Joshi

If there was one word that would describe the art on display it would be scale – it was almost as if each artist wanted to outdo the others through scale. One could say the space demanded such large scale works, and it worked for some installations like L.N. Tallur’s mega roof, or Vivan Sundaram’s work using the terracotta remains from the archaeological site of Muziris. But the most poignant was Valsan Kolleri’s work where he used a tiny back room and used the material from the building.

Read more about the biennale here.

Indian Art at SH Contemporary 2012

September 15, 2012•Art

Manjari Sihare speaks with Diana Campbell about the India Focus projects at SH Contemporary, the premier Asia Pacific Contemporary Art Fair in Shanghai, China

SH Contemporary is one of the most successful art fairs in China, as it captures the dynamism of the Chinese art market as well as the spirit of Shanghai, a truly creative city that bridges business, culture and innovation. The 6th edition of the fair took place in the spectacular Shanghai Exhibition Center, one of the city’s landmarks, from 7–9 September 2012. SH Contemporary was organized into two main sections: The Art Show with over 100 selected exhibitors, and SH Contemporary Projects. The latter included an exhibition oncontemporary ink and calligraphy-related multimedia works titled Now Ink, and Hot Spots consisting of large scale and site specific projects by various artists. The Indian component of Hot Spots was presented by the Creative India Foundation and curated by Diana Campbell, the founding director and chief curator of the foundation. Campbell shared details of this project with me:

Q: Give us an overview of SH Contemporary’s India Focus?

A: For this rendition of SH Contemporary, the director Massimo Torrigiani wanted to complement the fair by supporting large scale curatorial projects. There are curated exhibitions, such as Now Ink (artists reflecting on the traditional Chinese medium of Ink and calligraphy), Hot Spots (monumental new commissions), and First Issue (curated solo projects by young artists). I was invited to add to the fair’s curatorial programming by contributing my knowledge of Indian art to the fair’s programming. What is great is this is not an ‘India’ show per se, the artists are integrated into the overall exhibition for the quality of the work. The artists included in the India Focus projects do not have galleries with booths at the fair, which shows the commitment of the organizers to showing good works and creating quality exhibitions, not just highlighting the works of their exhibitors’ artists.

Q: How did this project take fruition? Please highlight Creative India Foundation’s role in Focus and the SH Contemporary Fair in general?

A: I met Davide Quadrio, the director of ArtHub Asia, who was in charge of the special projects, because we were both speaking at a public art conference in London. He was interested in the work I have been doing, and he and Massimo Torrigiani invited me to come to China to do a site visit. I was taken with the space and the potential to present Indian creativity to such a wide audience. I also studied Chinese in school, so personally I was interested in revisiting the art of this region. The Creative India Foundation supported new commissions and my curatorial work for the fair. The Foundation is presenting the work of Indian artists, and this way the work that is displayed is not tied to a particular gallery or region. 

Q: Could you talk a little about the significance of India being the inaugural country for SH Contemporary: Focus? With the Indian Highway exhibition at the Ullens Center in Beijing and now the SH Contemporary: Focus, could we say that finally this is the start of a cultural exchange between the two countries which have so far had their buzzing contemporary art scenes restricted to their own fortresses?

A. I certainly hope so! There are many challenges navigating between the ‘fortresses’, but I hope that the growing interest in India will create new opportunities for Indian and Chinese cross-cultural exchange. There is already another exhibition with Indian artists right around the corner. I am co-curating the Mumbai City Pavilion for the Shanghai Biennale (which is exploring city rather than national pavilions) and there will be 9 artists in that exhibition – it opens in a month.

Q: China is known for its censorship rules as we saw in the recent episode at the Ullens Center (removal of Tejal Shah’s work at the behest of the Indian government). Did you encounter problems of this kind with your curation? Were the proposals and final projects vetted by the Chinese authorities before, during and after the works were installed?

A: Everything must be vetted by the censorship board months in advance. None of my works were particularly controversial, so I was fine. However, there were some works that were pulled by the censorship bureau at the opening – and since one was in the catalogue – the catalogue is now banned. Sometimes censorship can create more interest (like Ai Wei Wei). Tejal Shah’s piece ironically was an Indian Embassy instigated censorship situation, they pressured Beijing to pull the video, otherwise it would have been fine. 

Gyan Panchal, pelom 2, 2012
Now Ink
Courtesy: Jhaveri contemporary, Mumbai

Q: You have also co-curated the theme-based exhibition, Now Ink. Please elaborate on the works of artists featured herein: Gyan Panchal, Manish Nai and Rohini Devasher?

 A: Gyan Panchal, Rohini Devasher, and Manish Nai join a group of East Asian artists who explore the very traditional use of ink in new ways. In Gyan Panchal’s work Pelom 2, he transforms a found piece of marble which had been artificially painted green. He subtly removes the green ink trying to get back to the stone’s original color, and the result is quite beautiful. 

Rohini Devasher’s beguiling video Arboreal uses video feedback to produce beautiful tree like forms which resemble ink drawings, but actually do not use ink at all. Manish Nai uses watercolor to transform photographs of cracked walls by adding further dimension to them. This exhibition has been incredibly well received and has been invited to show in Venice during the Biennale as a satellite exhibition. 

Rohini Devasher, Arboreal, 2011
Now Ink
Courtesy: The artist and Project 88, Mumbai

Q: Please tell us about the new projects by Shilpa Gupta, Aaditi Joshi and Raqs Media Collective commissioned by the Creative India Foundation? 

A: Shilpa Gupta was an ArtHub Asia collaboration, and their team searched the country to find a calligrapher who could write the Chinese Arabic script called Xiao er Jing. The piece says “I Live Under Your Sky Too” in English, Chinese, and Xiao er Jing, and with ArtHub’s support will travel to a public place in Shanghai soon. Shilpa is also in the biennale – so she is having quite a China moment. She also designed the costumes for the Paris Opera having to do with China earlier this year. 

Aaditi Joshi, Untitled, 2012 (front and side views)
Commissioned by the Creative India Foundation

Aaditi Joshi, Untitled, 2012
Commissioned by the Creative India Foundation

Aaditi Joshi created and completed works in China. It was her first time out of India, and she had a production based residency and collaborated with Chinese workers. She created a beautiful mountain like sculpture which graces the west wing entrance, and the plastic form is reminiscent of Chinese scholar rocks. Her work has been invited to show in a UNESCO Heritage building called Bund18, so the project will take a longer life. 

Raqs Media Collective, Whenever the heart skips a beat, 2012
Commissioned by the Creative India Foundation
Courtesy: The artists, Project 88, Mumbai and Creative India Foundation
Image courtesy: Diana Campbell

Raqs’ work, Whenever the Heart Skips a Beat, is a work I have a long involvement with since I commissioned the original video for the India Art Fair projects I curated last year. They created stills of the clock work and translated them into Chinese – and these projections were displayed in monumental size in the main hall.

Q: This is actually the second time that SH Contemporary has prioritized India, the first being in 2008 to showcase the Best Discoveries project by Delhi based curator, Deeksha Nath. Would you have any insights from the Fair organizers about the perception and reception towards Indian art in 2008 and now?

A: The fair has had many changes in leadership (which is one of its criticisms) so no one has been discussing the past projects.

Q: SH Contemporary is considered to be the most important art fair in China having preceded ART HK in its inception. How are the two different, if at all? Do the tax free import and English language environment give ART HK an edge over SH Contemporary?

A: I would think the user friendly logistics of Hong Kong would make it a much more internationally friendly for exhibitors. However, for the Chinese market, SH Contemporary brings the best of Asian art domestically and serves this market beautifully, and there are real tax benefits to buying overseas. I was at dinner with directors of Art HK and Art Stage Singapore last night, and I think all three can co-exist and thrive together as they don’t necessarily have the same client base. SH Contemporary’s curatorial projects were a strong addition to navigating the chaos of an art fair. I was intrigued by Pablo Rudolf’s (Lorenzo Rudolf’s son) plans for Art Stage Singapore with an Indonesia Pavilion with completely new commissions. I sponsored a project for Art HK in the past and I think the way the booths were organized wasn’t that friendly to the smaller Asian gallery exhibitors – I think this is going to change now that the leadership is Art Basel, though. I think the India Art Fair is definitely at risk when it comes to Art HK, at least with having international exhibitors.

Q: What has the response been like? China is known to represent the new breed of international art collectors. Have these collectors expressed any interest in Indian art?

A: The response has been great, and there’s been good interest in Indian art, especially Manish Nai. There are many new museums opening in China and they are beginning to have a more pan Asian focus. 

Manish Nai, Untitled works, 2012
Now Ink
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke

Read more about SH Contemporary 2012

Diana Campbell is Founding Director and Chief Curator, Creative India Foundation, Hyderabad, a private foundation which advances Indian contemporary art globally and is developing India’s first international sculpture park. She is a guest contributor on our blog. To read her previous posts, please click here and stay tuned for more. 

Sunil Janah: A Tribute

July 21, 2012•Art

Manjari Sihare of Saffronart speaks with Ram Rahman about noted photojournalist, Sunil Janah

New York: Renowned Indian photojournalist, Sunil Janah (born in 1918 in Assam) died due to natural causes at his home in Berkeley, California in June this year. Janah, who worked in India in the 1940s, is best known for his wide coverage of the infamous Bengal famine of 1942. A member of the Communist Party of India, Janah had the fortune of sharing an amicable relationship with political stalwarts such as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and M.A. Jinnah. Janah’s passing was announced to the art fraternity by his close friend and associate, Ram Rahman, via an email (copied below). Rahman, an eminent photographer himself, and the sole authority on Janah’s work, mounted a large retrospective of his work in New York in 1998 in an informal but extremely well received exhibition of 600 vintage prints. Click here for a note on this exhibition by Rahman, and his proposal for a monograph on Janah is still to be published.

I would like to thank Ram Rahman for sharing this email with us, as well as his book proposal.

Sunil Janah, at his exhibition in New York, 1998.
Photo © Ram Rahman (not to be used without full caption and credit)

Sunil Janah’s Obituary by Ram Rahman

It is with great sadness that we have to inform you that Sunil Janah, the great photographer, passed away peacefully in his home in Berkeley, California on June 21st. His wife, Shobha, passed away only a few weeks before. He is survived by his son Arjun Janah of Brooklyn, New York.

Janah was born in Assam in 1918, but grew up in Calcutta. He was educated at St. Xavier’s and Presidency colleges in Calcutta. Like so many others at the time, he had joined the student federation inspired by left wing politics. When the ban on the Communist party was lifted by the British as they supported the allied front against the fascist forces of Hitler and Mussolini, he caught the eye of the visionary General Secretary of the Communist Party, PC Joshi. Janah was a keen amateur photographer, Joshi recognised his talent and overnight persuaded him to abandon his English studies and travel with him and the artist Chittoprasad to photograph the famine raging across Bengal in 1943. The photographs by Janah published in the party journal People’s War brought him instant fame as they revealed to the shocked nation the horror of the famine. He moved with Chittoprasad to live in the party commune in Bombay, where both were intimately associated with the Progressive Writers Association (PWA) and IPTA, The Indian People’s Theatre Association. Janah had become the most famous photographer in India by then and was sought out by Life magazine’s Margaret Bourke White, with whom he formed a unique friendship and working relationship in 1945.

Unlike other photographers, Janah was an active political worker whose political work happened to be photography. Because of his talent and reputation, PC Joshi happily acceded to requests from the Congress party, The Muslim League and The National Conference in Kashmir to allow him to photograph their meetings and conventions. As an insider with a political ideology, Janah’s photographs stood out for their passionate engagement, idealism and an uncompromising artistic vision. He became intimate not just with all the legendary cultural figures associated with the left in the 1940’s, but also the entire spectrum of the political leadership. His portraits of these legends stand out for their intimate and personal power. Most were published in the Party journal People’s Age.

After the political split in the Communist Party when PC Joshi was sidelined in 1947, Janah moved back to Calcutta and opened a studio. He was a founding member along with Satyajit Ray, Chidananda Das Gupta and Hari Das Gupta of the Calcutta Film Society. Satyajit Ray designed his first book of photographs, The Second Creature (Signet Press) in 1949. In Calcutta he started photographing dance and dancers making iconic pictures of Shanta Rao, Ragini Devi, Indrani Rahman and many others. He also made an extensive document on commercial assignment of the new steel mills, coal mines, power plants, railway engine factories and dams being built in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa – the great temples of the new India coming up in the 1950’s. His later documentation across India of the tribal communities, done with the anthropologist Verrier Elvin, was another landmark.

In my view, his work is the defining epic document of the last decade of the freedom struggle and the first decade of free India – the ‘Nehruvian’ years. Janah remained a committed communist till his last breadth, though not a party member. Sunil Janah had married Shobha, a medical doctor, and moved to Delhi in the sixties when she got a job here. Never very good at commerce, Janah became very bitter at his work being extensively used without payment or credit, and fulminated particularly against Mulk Raj Anand who used his pictures in Marg – pictures which educated an entire generation about India’s temple architecture and sculpture. This bitterness made him a recluse in later life and led to the huge body of work being hidden from public view for decades.

I was able to mount a huge retrospective of his work in New York in 1998 in an informal exhibition of 600 vintage prints, which created a sensation. A full- page review in the New York Times brought scores of people to the gallery, many older Indians left sobbing in tears, so moved by the history they saw. Sadly, I was unable to ever raise funds for a book and failed for years to persuade the government of India to acquire the treasure of his archive, which sits in his basement in Berkeley. The government of India awarded Janah a Padma Shree in January 2012, mistakenly awarding him the same honour which Indira Gandhi had given him in 1974. Embarrassed, the government upgraded it to a Padma Bhushan. It had not yet been presented to Janah by the Consul General in San Fransisco at the time of his death.

Sahmat pays tribute to Sunil Janah with whom we had an intimate relationship. Sahmat hosted a major lecture on his work by Ram Rahman at The Nehru Memorial Museum at Teen Murti two years ago. Janah’s photos of Gandhi featured in Sahmat’s posters during their commemoration of Gandhi and his photographs, books and pictures in People’s War were recently exhibited at Teen Murti in Sahmat’s symposium on the Progressive Culture Legacy of the PWA and IPTA in Teen Murti. Ram also presented his lecture on Janah at the Town Hall in Ernakulum, Kerala at a huge public meeting.

Sahmat will host a memorial meeting shortly.

Ram Rahman