living and loving the life of a photographer
08/Jun/2007
Annu Palakunnathu Matthew
Photo exhibitions galore in Bangalore this week. There's art for the masses and art for the classes. To start with, the Alliance Française demonstrates once again that its gallery is a socialist space, to put it diplomatically. All are welcome and the complex art of curation may please be damned.
The current exhibition on Light Paintings could have been the work of a newbie taking his first digital camera for a spin. The AF, despite its good intentions, makes travesty of the great traditions of art photography that France is known for.
Moving on, the Bangalore Photography Club is displaying some of their members' work. Considering that these are amateur and hobby photographers, and calibrating my filter accordingly, I found this to be a much more satisfying experience, thanks to sensible selection and overall good design.
RED INDIAN/BROWN INDIAN. © Annu Palakunnathu Matthew
But coming to the point, we the contemporary photography-starved denizens of Bangalore must thank Tasveer for bringing us Annu Palakunnathu Matthew. In An Indian from India, Annu questions through a series of self-portraits, the notions of being seen as Indian. She uses sepia-toned ethnographic photography of the “exotic being” typical to the 19th century, the style of which is demeaning by today's standards.
One can do justice to this work only by viewing them as prints in a gallery, captions and all. So run to Tasveer while it lasts. Free to view; $4000 to take home.
Also showing is Memories of India, a collection of moody black-and-white images that recalls her childhood memories. Shot with one of those old plastic lens cameras, the images suffer strong vignetting, which is crucial to the concept of evoking a memory. (Speaking of plastic lenses and vignetting, Lens Culture features an interview with Michelle Bates, the “Holga Queen”.)
In the beginning of 2005, I was a bloody mess. I hated my job, my job hated me back in double measure, and while life was rapidly snowballing downhill, I was increasingly becoming disgruntled with working in the US. Most people would have resorted to banned substances to overcome a similar situation. I chose, instead, to buy a camera.
From Monday to Friday, I slaved away in a cubicle 16-18 hours a day, receding motivation making days seem longer than they ought to be. Come Saturday, I would catch the first bus at 4:30am and find inspiration at Abraham Lincoln's feet or at the Iwo Jima Memorial. Life was like that. (See my first photographs)
July the Fourth snuck up on me one day, and I felt the urge to go see small town America. I picked a random town from the list on greyhound.com, and that town happened to be Providence. Because it sounded interesting in a weird way and because I could afford it.
I saw the signs in Providence. July 2005
By fate or luck or whatever you believe in, that's how I landed in what turned out to be the home of Rhode Island School of Design, which at any given time is one of the Top 3 places in the world to study contemporary photography. It took me one visit to the RISD Museum to understand that the frontiers of photography were much, much further than I had ever imagined.
While I had many warm encounters at Providence that weekend, one that will persist in my memory was the feeling upon seeing An Indian from India by Annu Palakunnathu Matthew. Here was an example of how the most rigourous standards of photographic art and science brought together could express a frustration not unlike what I was going through at that moment in time. Annu was sticking the Great Indian Middle Finger at history and at America through her work.
Providence had somehow lived up to its name. I knew instantly that this is what I want to do with my life—adopt photography as a medium for my expression. Things moved fast from that point onwards. Within a month, I tendered my resignation, and another month later, I found myself looking through the window of a modest apartment in Paris. I saw ahead of me a new future of renewed hope and sweet uncertainty.
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