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Elegance Under Canvas

July 25, 2013•Furniture & Interiors

Shivajirao Gaekwar of Saffronart shares some information on the campaign furniture available as part of Saffronart’s upcoming Travel & Leisure Auction

An Elegant Campaign Day Bed, Lot 36

An Elegant Campaign Day Bed, Lot 36. Image Credit: http://www.saffronart.com/customauctions/PreWork.aspx?l=8587

Mumbai: Representative of a more elegant time, campaign furniture is synonymous with luxury travel, the gentleman traveller, historic military campaigns across the world in the 19th century, and the luxurious ‘shikar’ or shooting camps  of the British Raj. It’s surprising portability and light weight meant that the gentleman officers of the 19th century could take the comforts of home everywhere they went, be it the military campaigns across the Indian Empire or Africa – everything could be dismantled or folded within minutes, and would travel from camp to camp by long supply trains which would comprise of elephant, camel, bullock cart, or horses. Historically, campaign furniture has been documented as being used as early as the time of the Roman Empire, but most commonly associated with the British Empire through the Georgian, and right up to the Victorian periods (1714 – 1901). (Nicholas A. Brawer, British Campaign Furniture: Elegance Under Canvas, 1740-1914).

A Teakwood Campaign Bed, Lot 8

A Teakwood Campaign Bed, Lot 8. Image Credit: http://www.saffronart.com/customauctions/PreWork.aspx?l=8559

Theoretically, all furniture, usually made either of teak or mahogany, specifically to be dismantled into two or more sections or folded for easy transport, and designed to be packed up and carried ‘on the march’, can be described as campaign furniture. Campaign furniture is easily recognizable as it usually comes with brass corners and strap work for protection during transportation. Everything from the brass detail, hinges in odd places or ‘X-frame’ legs, all give clues to the functionality of campaign furniture (Nicholas A. Brawer, British Campaign Furniture: Elegance Under Canvas, 1740-1914).

Even today, these rare, superbly engineered pieces, with their simple, clean lines are as elegant and functional as they were for their original purpose.

A Circular Folding Campaign Table, Lot 7

A Circular Folding Campaign Table, Lot 7. Image Credit: http://www.saffronart.com/customauctions/PreWork.aspx?l=8558

You can view more examples of campaign furniture on our Travel & Leisure online catalogue.

Along with campaign furniture, other beautiful and interesting items will be available as part of the auction, scheduled to take place on the Saffronart website on 29-30 July, 2013.

Art evoking the spirit of hospitality at Mumbai International Airport Terminal

July 21, 2013•Art, Installations

Ipshita Sen of Saffronart comments on Rajeev Sethi’s new project

New York: Rajeev Sethi, a prominent Indian scenographer, fills up the void of public art by initiating a phenomenal art project that is not only aesthetically pleasing, but at the same time acts as a gateway to India and its magnificently diverse and unique cultural heritage.

The installation, commencing September 2013, will convert over 4,39,000 square meters of space at terminal 2 of the Mumbai Internal Airport into a large installation of art works of different mediums ornamenting it. Mumbai, being one of India’s largest metropolitan cities, attracting vast numbers of international visitors, could not have been more apt a location to house a project of such scale and motive.

Sethi says “The art programmer seek to convert the airport into a spectacular doorway into India, integrated into the fabric of the city it is located in and initiating the visitor into the experience that lie beyond its doors”

Passengers flying into the new international airport terminal will be gracefully welcomed with Sethi’s magnificent project, aiming to introduce swarming passengers at the busy terminal with Indian art and a gateway to the culture, arts and crafts of India.

“Art should not be the privilege of just the rich or museums, it should be displayed in large public places” says Sethi.

The entire project is a creative collaboration between contemporary artists and artisans of the state whose arts are being represented. It is an intriguing juxtaposition between age-old tradition and continuity. It lays emphasis on India being a country of dynamism and complexity, as it exists in several centuries simultaneously. The project defines what India is and how it is through layered narratives, simplistically representing India. It will take viewers on to a unique experience, one that’s unexplored.

The artists involved in the project are a mixture of local artisans and established artists such as Gulmmohammed Sheikh, Amitavada Das, Jagannath Panda and Riyas Komu amongst several others.

A few highlights of the project will include: recently unveiled segment of the project called “Udan Khatola’, ‘Touché’ and ‘Reappearances – Below the Tarmac’ in the capital, New Delhi, before it was transported to Mumbai. This too along with several other works of art, was created mostly by artisans from different states of India in the North, South, East and West. Overall, the project is funded by GVK and is the collaboration and coordination of over 1000 artists all over the country.

“There is no dearth of vision in this country. What’s more important is how you implement an idea. And in a country like ours where we have a luxury of committed skilful people, we can realize some of the most difficult visions. Machines would stay but I believe hands would always stay one step ahead,” says the scenographer,

Udan Khatola, is a piece of work where a couple of artists have collaborated on. It is a 6.5ft papier-mâché sculpture conceptualized by Sethi, made by Sabtir Kanjania and painted by artist Madhvi Parekh. The piece is enamored by various techniques used by scenic painters of Chandan Nagar during local rituals as well as ornamented with different kinds of horses as interpreted by different traditions across the Indian subcontinent.

“It is an amalgamation of Indian mythology and machines. Its structure and colours—blue, black and silver—give it a bright and royal look, making it look like a royal carrier and yet a fantastical flying plane,” says Parekh
The project is centered on six themes. The common umbrella theme is of ‘seamless India’ and constitutes the western gateway of Molela as described by Sethi. He adds “The northern gateway displays art from Kashmir; the eastern from Kolkata, and the southern gateway represents a very whimsical gopuram with gods and goddesses flying off”

The art displayed representing Northern India will cover at least 1.5 km of the terminal space. Srinagar hosted an event for the preview of murals before it was due to travel to Mumbai.

“The force of art and craft can create bonds of unity and cooperation between artisans of different areas and cultures. These arts and crafts act as brand ambassadors of civilization, heritage, culture and detail about the people, their living and status,” said chief minister Omar Abdullah, at the preview in Srinagar.  The large 32 by 16 foot mural represents Srinagar incorporating various places of worships from Mosques to Gurudwaras. A local artist, Fayaz Ahmed Jan, one of fourteen, working on it claimed to have spent over a year working on the mural.

For a personal touch, each of the commissioned artists was given a mobile phone encouraging them to document the works being made. These would be placed near the respective works, complimenting the work of art, creating a dialogue between the viewer and the artist. Almost like a sneak preview in to the artists mind.

The project overall unfolds hidden treasures and stories, layer after layer, winding and unwinding fragments of the subcontinent’s rich histories and culture, continuing forward enabling the viewer, both international and local, to admire the riches that the subcontinent has to offer. Therefore, Sethi with this unique initiative uses art and artistic representations of Indian culture and tradition, to build a sustainable platform for Indian art, especially folk Indian art on the international market for art.

Below you can enjoy a video on the project and more information can be found here.

Be/Longing: Art in Washington DC

April 13, 2013•Art

Guest blogger Sita Reddy explores the diasporic art of the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective

Washington DC: This is not the first time Washington DC has seen provocative contemporary art by women artists of the South Asian diaspora. Exhibitions of the work of Rajkamal Kahlon (Provisions Library, 2005) and Simryn Gill (Freer-Sackler Galleries, 2007), to take examples, have spoken powerfully to issues of postcolonial identity and transnational migration, to histories of passage and geographies of place. But this is certainly the first major collective exhibition of this scale to grace the nation’s capital, and the combined scope, quality, and range of conceptual feminist art – shown together in ways that create new dialogues – fundamentally alters both the landscape and the aesthetics of diasporic art and immigrant activism.

The South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC, pronounced ‘saucy’), is a New York-based group that, on March 1 2013, opened Be/Longing, its Washington DC debut at the Smith Center’s Joan Hisaoka Gallery.  For over fifteen years, the collective – co-founded by Jaishri Abichandani in 1997 as a creative space for feminists who make art – has nurtured and catalyzed the work of more than 100 artists, filmmakers, writers, many of whom were represented in the beautifully curated 2012 retrospective Her Stories at the Queens Museum of Art.

Be/Longing

Be/Longing

Be/Longing offers a small (but tasty) slice of the group’s work, featuring ten artists from three South Asian countries in the subcontinental peninsula, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, and one artist from Iran. Curated by Brooke Seidelmann and Monica Jahan Bose, whose installation, performance photographs, and mixed-media drawings bookend the gallery space, the 30-odd artworks address multiple meanings of ‘longing’ for diasporic South Asian women. Intelligently juxtaposed photographic prints, paintings, mixed media works, sculptural pieces and installations engage, resist, defy and ultimately escape conventional stereotypes of sexuality and conservative ideologies of immigrant assimilation. If Be/Longing the exhibition succeeds, it is in suggesting that ‘belonging’ itself – as artists, citizens, activists, migrants, tourists, wives, partners, lovers, daughters, mothers, laborers – is no simple matter for South Asian diasporic women.  Far from being monolithic or seamless, the process is often fraught with conflict, whether the ties are local or global, national or regional, civic or familial, erotic or economic, religious or commercial, of tourism or of trade.

It is this sense of struggle, of feminist struggle, that quickly emerges as a running leitmotiv in Be/Longing . For this is a decidedly feminist exhibition, in keeping with SAWCC’s deep activist origins, about diasporic bodies and diasporic female voices. It is about bodies that speak and bodies that are silenced; dismembered bodies and invisible bodies; bodies that are objectified by the media and bodies that are surveilled by the state; dead bodies and liminal bodies that spring to life from unexpected places or cracks and margins of society.  And indeed, the installations framing the gallery space perfectly echo these themes. Marcy Chevali’s odd, amorphous tiny grey animal bodies made from lint (each with a pink spot for its heart) are strung above Amina Ahmed’s large charcoal-on-paper musings on weeds, roots, hair, that seem to grow out of the everyday, the ordinary, the mundane (and what could be more mundane or ubiquitous than dryer lint collected from friends and family?). Monica Jahan Bose’s chilling Agunmukha – the singed sari and stones hinting at victims of gendered violence and dowry deaths – speaks diagonally across the gallery to Shelly Bahl’s installation of wax votive candles in the shape of an invisible body, marked in ways that recall both a sarcophagus/reliquary and a Keith Haring-like chalk outline in a forensic crime scene. Are these missing female bodies memorials, shrines, forgotten relics, mute witnesses to unspeakable crimes, markers of sad demographic realities, objects of worshipful veneration – or all of the above?

Elsewhere in the exhibition one finds fragmented body parts and fragmented languages that draw on and subvert media.  Ruby Chishti’s heart-breaking sculptural work of bulbous, fleshy, headless bodies (made from stockings) sits uneasily alongside Jaishri Abichandani’s disembodied ‘fighting’ heads on kitschy, pink, boxing gloves.  In the next room, text and image collide in an iconographic dialogue worthy of a graphic novel: Abichandani’s powerful Allah hu Akbar (God is great) – leather whips encased in decorative Swarovski crystals – hangs overhead and across from Shelly Bahl’s foot-level Leila O. Leila – an evocative ink on vinyl piece, a paneled storyboard on transcultural women and the underbelly of mass tourism using the universal language of airport signage.  Samira Abbassy’s rich oil paintings, drawings, and exquisitely fabricated (and mischievous) dolls seem to have little in common with Nida Abidi’s pastel-colored mixed media papier maches and grainy video, or with Chitra Ganesh’s beautiful but disturbing photographs of twisted bodies, except for the sense of a peepshow in reverse, of women defying the media ‘gaze’ to look back at us – many defiantly  — through handmade objects, animations, and hidden narratives. All is not what it seems on the surface; the textures of diaspora come apart on close examination, fabric tearing at the seams. Chevali’s performance piece Unraveling at the exhibition opening offers a case in point. The sweater she wore was slowly unraveled and transferred, skein by skein with knitting needles, onto a functionless tube. Now displayed in the exhibition next to each other, sweater and tube, both rendered mute as ‘useful’ objects, turn the semiotics of form and function on its head.

Dangling over the entire space – indeed, the heart of the gallery – and picking up on all these themes is Sa’dia Rehman’s extraordinary installation Divine Guidance, an octopus-like chandelier of young girls’ legs clad in white tights, chopped at their waists, hung upside down by the tips of their little black maryjanes, tulle skirts falling open – near-naked, forlorn, vulnerable, exposed. Rehman’s artist statement describes addressing erased memories from her Pakistani American past to give new meaning and voice to oppressive taboos and silences that were hidden even as they were aggressively enforced. The piece is a haunting reminder of play interrupted, work left unfinished, stories that remain untold.

The artworks do not all sing the same song, or even the same political mantra from the activist’s picket line. But if there’s a shared refrain in this exhibition, perhaps it is best captured by that old adage on equality: what’s sauce for the goose may be saucier for the gander! Feminist art exhibitions from women of the South Asian diaspora – indeed from all women of color — have never seemed more timely or more urgent.

Closing events on April 13 include:

3:30-4:30 pm. Monica Jahan Bose’s performance/installation “Indelible Scent”

4:30-5.30 pm. Artists’ talk with special guest, Masum Momaya, curator of the Smithsonian’s HomeSpun project

5:30-7 pm. Closing reception

Be/Longing

Art from the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective, March 1-April 13, 2013

The Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery, Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, 1632 U Street NW, Washington DC, 20009

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Sita Reddy is a researcher, writer, and curator based in Washington DC. She is currently Research Associate at the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, where she is working on her book on the iconography of yogi-fakirs to accompany the Sackler Gallery’s upcoming art exhibition Yoga: The Art of Transformation.  

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia – Part IV

October 8, 2012•Antiquities, Art

Josheen Oberoi of Saffronart explores the stunning new galleries of Islamic art at the Met, a few centuries at a time.

New York: Last month I had started posting about the Islamic Art collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that opened to the public after an eight year renovation in November last year. For those reading this series for the first time, here is a little introduction to these new galleries. Organized by geographical regions and time periods (from ca. 7th century AD through ca. 20th century), these fifteen new galleries (Galleries 450 – 464) present historically rigorous exhibits of arts that flourished under the aegis of Islamic rulers through many centuries. These galleries are also incredible in representing the diversity of mediums and contexts of these artistic practices.

In my last post, I had described the highlights of Galleries 459 through 461, that present the arts of the Ottoman Empire (ca 1299 – 1922), as shared with me by Dr. Maryam Ekhtiar, an Associate Curator in the Department of Islamic Art.  Here’s the very useful museum map again, to help follow the information:

Floor Plan of New Galleries
Image courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Today, I look at Gallery 462 and its arts of Safavids and later Iran (from the 16th – 20th centuries). We have followed Iran from the 7th century onwards from Galleries 451, 453 and 455 and this gallery brings our understanding of art from the region almost to contemporary times. 

Iran was united and ruled by the Safavid dynasty from 1501  -1722.  Shah cAbbas who ruled from 1587–1629 was an important patron of the arts and this period saw an expansion and revival of production in arts for local consumption and commercial exchange with Europe. Ceramics in the style of Iznik pottery from Turkey that we saw in the last post and luster ware that has also been discussed previously were both encouraged extensively as is visible in the objects in this gallery.  But when you enter this space, there are a few works of art that dominate the conversation – the carpets and the illustrated manuscripts.

Persian Garden Carpet
Object Name: Carpet
Date: second half 18th century
Geography: Iran, Kurdistan
Image courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Under Shah cAbbas, carpet weaving and textile production was transformed into a state industry, designed and produced in royal workshops at the new capital of Iran – Isfahan, in southern Iran. There are many different types and styles of carpets on exhibit here – medallion, garden, a possibly royal carpet, the “Polonaise” and carpets known as ‘Portuguese carpets’.

The Persian garden carpet or the char-bagh, (on the left)  represented a bird’s eye view of a traditional garden, which included water channels, fish swimming in these channels, birds and trees.

The “Seley Carpet” below, in style of a medallion carpet, is an exquisite example of the combination of medallion and vegetal motifs. These carpets centered around a medallion, similar to what appeared on book covers and texts, suggesting a cross pollination of designs between different art forms. These medallions were then surrounded by scrolling vegetal designs.

The Seley Carpet
Object Name: Carpet
Date: late 16th century
Geography: Iran
Image courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This ‘Portuguese’ carpet below shows the central medallion with floral vines combined with explicit maritime scenes with ships sailed by Europeans in the four corners, possibly testifying to an active export and mercantile exchange between Europe and Iran at this time. Just these few examples of the pieces exhibited in this gallery showcase the complexity and diversity of carpet production in Iran at this time, especially under Shah cAbbas.

“Portuguese” Carpet with Maritime Scenes
Object Name: Carpet
Date: 17th century
Geography: Northeastern Iran, Khurasan
Image courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Rustam’s Fourth Course, He Cleaves a Witch”, Folio from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp
Abu’l Qasim Firdausi (935–1020)
Artist: Painting attributed to Qadimi (active ca. 1525–65)
Object Name: Folio from an illustrated manuscript
Reign: Shah Tahmasp (1524–76)
Date: ca. 1525
Geography: Iran
Image courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The other highlight in Gallery 462 are the intricate folios of the Shahnama or “Book of Kings”. This is one of the great treasures from the rule of Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524 – 1576)  the second ruler of the Safavid dynasty. It was commissioned and made in the royal workshop. The Shahnama is a Persian national epic based on an oral tradition that dates back to pre-Islamic times and was versified by Firdausi in the early 11th century. It contains within many Zoroastrian threads with the ideas of polarities, of good and bad – an illustration also intended as education to the rulers and princes. This particular manuscript of the Shahnama is the most luxurious Persian manuscript ever produced and the best artists were employed by the royal workshop – painters, calligraphers, binders, illuminators with two generations of artists working on these manuscripts. The Met has 78 illustrations out of a total of 258 illustrated folios, presenting epic love scenes, battles of fantastical creatures with humans or among animals. There are multiple folios on display at any time in the gallery, with seating available to engage with them at leisure.

If you visit please do set aside some time for these folios. They are intimate in size but so detailed and beautifully rendered. I find myself noticing new details in them with each successive visit.  I have also been linking the title of each work (immediately under the image) to it’s individual museum page. This allows you to zoom in and look at enlarged sections clearly. If you cannot visit the museum, I would recommend using this feature to do the images justice, especially for today’s post.

Next week, in the last post in this series, we will visit the remaining two (out of fifteen) galleries, showcasing Mughal and later South Asian art. Stay tuned!

Homai Vyarawalla at the Rubin Museum of Art

August 6, 2012•Art

Josheen Oberoi on Homai Vyarawalla’s retrospective at the Rubin Museum of Art, New York

New York:  Homai Vyarawalla (1913 – 2012) was India’s first female photojournalist and played a pivotal role in documenting India’s political history from the 1940s through 1970. Candid: The Lens and Life of Homai Vyarawalla, an exhibition of her photographs and related ephemera, opened at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City on July 6 and is the first solo showing of her work in the United States. Unfortunately, she was not able to attend this exhibition, as she passed away in January at the age of 98. Vyarawalla was widely eulogized in India and abroad, including in the New York Times. Her presence as the first woman in a nascent profession like photojournalism (as it was in 1940s India) has often framed the discussion about her importance in India’s history. But her iconic status is equally deserved by her command over her craft, as is evident in the exhibition.

Installation image of Candid: The Lens and Life of Homai Vyarawalla
Photograph by David De Armas
Image Courtesy: Rubin Museum of Art, New York

The exhibition is organized thematically in clusters ranging from three to six images, around her personal photography, photojournalistic career post 1942, and commercial freelance work documenting the social life of Delhi in the late 1940s. Entering the exhibition space, we are first welcomed by a showcase that holds Vyarawalla’s two favorite cameras – the Roleiflex and Speed Graphic Pacemaker – most commonly used at that time. The solidity of these cameras (in stark comparison to the sleekness of digital cameras today) immediately establishes the tone of the exhibition, setting us up for a trip down memory lane. This is further enhanced by the immediacy of viewing the medium of gelatin silver prints in the exhibition.

The first set of photographs is from the 1930s, when Vyarawalla lived in Bombay and was a student at the Sir J.J. School of Arts. These predate her political photojournalism and capture everyday and mundane scenes in Bombay. These images are personal, subjective records of Vyarawalla’s Bombay – of VT Station, her classmate Rehana Mogul, and an expressive image of a monsoon-threatened Marine Drive. Many of these images were published in the weeklies of that time, particularly the Illustrated Weekly of India. Her later commercial work in Delhi chronicles the more elite social life of a city that was the center of politics in the 1940s. Two of these prints of parties at the Delhi Gymkhana Club have been included in the show. Out of this ‘non-political’ work, an exceptional photograph in the show is Fox Hunt. Shot in Delhi in the 1940s it is a moody, impressionistic take of a cold foggy morning in the city. Self-described as her favorite, this image exemplifies Vyarawalla’s ability to capture the atmosphere in which the moments she documented took place, suggesting a narrative instead of a sterile moment.

A Fox Hunt in Delhi led by Col. Sahni, Early 1940’s
Gelatin Silver Print
From the exhibition: Candid: The Lens and Life of Homai Vyarawalla
Collection: Alkazi Collection of Photography
Image Courtesy: Rubin Museum of Art, New York

Mohammad Ali Jinnah at his last Press Conference before leaving for Pakistan; August 1947
Gelatin Silver Print
From the exhibition: Candid: The Lens and Life of Homai Vyarawalla
Collection: Alkazi Collection of Photography
Image Courtesy: Rubin Museum of Art, New York

This is true of her political photography as well. Vyarawalla moved to Delhi with her husband Maneckshaw, also a photojournalist, in 1942 where they were employed by the British Information Services. Her political photojournalism began with the end of the Second World War and India’s path to independence in the mid-1940s that are represented in the exhibition through images like her portrait of Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Present at seemingly every major event of the time, the next cluster of images is of the funeral and cremation of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. These include intimate images of the Mountbatten family and Gandhi’s funeral procession.

The ashes of Mahatma Gandhi being carried in a procession, Allahabad; February 1948
Gelatin Silver Print
From the exhibition: Candid: The Lens and Life of Homai Vyarawalla
Collection: The Alkazi Collection of Photography
Image Courtesy: Rubin Museum of Art, New York

The display then moves to Vyarawalla’s favorite subject: Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister. His pervasive presence in her photographs over his seventeen years in office underline this, and offer an organic portrait of him as a public figure – in jest, relaxed, caught in a lonely moment of exhaustion, and in his interactions with the many foreign dignitaries that visited India, his famed charm and charisma visibly occupying the frame.

Prime Minister Nehru waiting for a dignitary to arrive at the Red Fort; 1950’s
Gelatin Silver Print
From the exhibition: Candid: The Lens and Life of Homai Vyarawalla
Collection: Alkazi Collection of Photography
Image Courtesy: Rubin Museum of Art, New York

Dr. Helen Keller, who was calling on President Dr. Rajendra Prasad at the Rashtrapati Bhawan, being greeted by, Prime Minister Nehru who had come to see her; 1955
Gelatin Silver Print
From the exhibition: Candid: The Lens and Life of Homai Vyarawalla
Collection: Alkazi Collection of Photography
Image Courtesy: Rubin Museum of Art, New York

Ho Chi Minh, President of North Vietnam being escorted by Pandit Nehru and Dr. Rajendra Prasad; 1958
Gelatin Silver Print
From the exhibition: Candid: The Lens and Life of Homai Vyarawalla
Collection: Alkazi Collection of Photography
Image Courtesy: Rubin Museum of Art, New York

The public figures that visited independent India were also extensively photographed by Vyarawalla. I found this selection of images and their curation in the exhibition particularly strong. They document the ethos of India as a nation immediately after independence. From Nehru’s playful interaction with Ho Chi Minh, at an otherwise grave political meeting, to meetings with Dr. Helen Keller, President Eisenhower, the Chinese Premier Chou En-lai in the days that the slogan ‘Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai’ was echoing around the country, all these feel like historical records of a new, exultant nation and the role it predicted for itself in the world.

Vyarawalla’s eye almost always caught these figures in unguarded moments of ease, and her portraits lack the stiffness of predictable posed photographs.

An image particularly relevant to contemporary India is of the Dalai Lama’s first visit in 1956. This was three years before his final, permanent escape to India and it is telling of her journalistic instinct that Vyarawalla chose to travel to Sikkim to photograph this occasion.

The Dalai Lama in ceremonial dress enters India through a high mountain pass. He is followed by the Panchen Lama, Sikkim, India; 1956
Gelatin Silver Print
From the exhibition: Candid: The Lens and Life of Homai Vyarawalla
Collection: Alkazi Collection of Photography
Image Courtesy: Rubin Museum of Art, New York

What is striking in Vyarawalla’s works is that the perspective she chose in all her images is appropriate to the moment, be it the intimate framing of Mahatma Gandhi on his funeral pyre or the low angle shot of Nehru releasing a dove, making him larger than life. There is also a marked lack of sentimentality in her compositions as a press photographer. She had an ability to maintain distance and still capture the personalities of the subjects and the events. This made viewing her photographs an engrossing experience, allowing me to create portraits of the time she lived in and captured.

In addition to her photographs, there are two other treasure troves in this exhibition. A showcase that spans the breadth of the gallery includes Vyarawalla’s contact prints from the 1940s through 1970. Also her press cards, hand colored Illustrated Weekly covers, invitations and thank you notes from the political figures she photographed – this case builds an image of the cultural life of Delhi during those years. Another gem is an excerpt from a documentary on her, directed by Anik Gosh and supported by Sparrow, where she is interviewed by Sabeena Gadihoke, her biographer (India in Focus: Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla, Mapin/Parzor, 2006) and a collaborator on this exhibition. Sprightly and undiminished, Vyarawalla speaks freely – on her beloved cameras, her courteous male colleagues of yore, the remarkable integrity of that time and most importantly, her method. She says, and I paraphrase, that there was no time to focus. ‘We had to put our distance, fit the picture and just click’.

This exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, New Delhi, and will remain on view till January 14, 2013. A larger retrospective of Vyarawalla’s work was held in 2010-2011 at the National Gallery of Modern Art, in New Delhi and Mumbai. A rare opportunity to view these images in person in New York, the show is definitely worth a dekko. Located in the museum’s Theater Level Gallery, admission to it is free of charge, a fact the show’s curator Beth Citron said Homai Vyarawalla would especially have been pleased with in an earlier interview with Saffronart.