Focusing on the photographer’s gaze

India’s complex social fabric of life A group exhibition, entitled ‘The Self & the Other: Portraiture in Contemporary Indian photography’ focuses on the photographer’s gaze.

The title, outwardly, presumes its more predictable investigation, apparently referring to natural impulses of the photographic gaze. The ‘Other’ came to be institutionalized through writings especially in the study of 19th century photographic practices. The subtitle refers to the prism through which we view the shifts, dichotomies and disturbances across India’s complex social fabric of life.

The show curated by Devika Daulet-Singh and Luisa Ortínez at North Gallery courtesy ARTIUM (Vitoria-Gasteiz) and Palau de la Virreina (Barcelona) gives an intimate view of contemporary life in India through the lens of 16 well known photographers.

The works featured are connected in their celebration of the staged image. The metaphysical self of artist Ebenezer Sunder Singh confronts his maleness and multi-cultural identity in a more direct yet equally bold series of portraits. Far from being just radical and subversive, his naked body becomes a site of spectatorial desire, consciously offering his dark skin to counter the Indian fascination for the fair skinned in an attempt to assert his visibility.

The desire to explore the interchangeability and fluidity of the Self is dramatically explored by performance artist Nikhil Chopra in a theatrical piece, which also resides in photographs to preserve its ephemeral nature. Tejal Shah appropriates images from a page in the history of psychoanalysis that though it doesn’t belong to her, she uses to disclose the voyeuristic gaze mentally challenged women were subjected to in the guise of scientific research.

Anita Khemka discloses the interiority of her disturbed mind in a series of self-portraits made during journeys to ease a personal crisis. Pushpamala N. departs from her past impersonations in an experimental short film. The viewer tails her in her sojourn, as she alternates between fact and fiction in a narrative using a rapid succession of images that are starkly lit. In Sheba Chhachhi’s portraits, the act of posing is privileged over her gaze according the feminist subjects a pronounced degree of control in projecting their own image.