A look at photographic works by Ram Rahman and Sunil Gupta

Introducing the viewers to the participating artists in his photography show, entitled ‘Lens-ing It’, curator Johny MLstates: “I do not intend to push these artists into the realm of something called ‘pure photography’ because the word ‘pure’ or ‘purity’ could cause a different ideological reading.

Hence, when I call these artists ‘lens based artists’ what I intend to say is this that they are artists who do not use their photography for creating another form of art. For these artists, photography and the photographic prints in themselves are complete forms (though opened ended often) which are liable to be analyzed contextually, using any tool or methodology, further as the images survive the time.”

Among the artists featured at Ashna Gallery in New Delhi is one of the most active photography artists in India. Ram Rahman has invested his energies in not only documenting and portraying the ideological and gender politics of his choice but also has employed his vision and camera for capturing the rare moments of intellectual rebellion in and around Delhi, where he resides half of the year, and elsewhere.

The series that the curator has chosen together with the artist for this show is not done in one go. Taken over a period of two decades, in this ‘imagined’ series (by the curator) one could see people, identifiable by their contributions and stance in public life. There are politicians like our present prime minister, artists and activists and so on in these pictures.

Reading within and without the context of the photograph and the frozen time exemplified in the pictures, despite their disparities in theme, one could see the aesthetics and politics of the artist conjoining them in one string as if these portrayals of the intelligentsia of Delhi were in fact exposing the chapters of an unpublished novel still waiting to be written down by the author.

Sunil Gupta, the veteran amongst the international contemporary photography artists is famous for his pictures of gender politics. As an individual who has declared his gender preferences long back, Sunil Gupta has been working towards establishing the aesthetics of difference through his photography that predominantly feature the man to man relationships both in the urban and rural scenarios. Also he makes meanderings to his ancestral spaces and attempts to find the linkages between his present self and the selves that had formed him ages back.

(Information and essay courtesy: curator Johny ML for Ashna Gallery, New Delhi)