Studio 4: The Reality of Life

There is a dainty strangeness with which a photograph endearingly captures that which at times cannot be said – but wholly felt. It is beyond chemical sorcery, darkroom developments, or digital productions. It is the caring, thoughtful sentiment that a photographer’s eye sees in a delicate moment. It bravely considers our nervousness and vulnerabilities, and wakes us up from an anxious slumber to carry life forward. This is most wistfully and lovingly felt with Sohrab Hura in Life is Elsewhere F (2005); Hura photographs a darkly dramatic atmosphere that he came across during his travels. It is an environment that he enjoys decoding, understanding – living – before it vanishes. Living a life that has been fraught with domestic tribulations, the photograph bares an eagerness, a lurid excitement that Hura immerses himself in to piece together what he calls ‘this wonderful jigsaw puzzle called life.’ 

These photographs – with their seemingly simple compositions and documentation – fill us with hope, an unadulterated sense of optimism about what is, in reality, the vast unknown of the universe and our existence. And yet, as Akshay Mahajan’s Untitled 3 and Untitled 6 (2014) present, the wheels of time, of effort, of passion do not stop. To grow up in a complex world requires vigour, vitality, and love; most assertively seen in Jyoti Bhatt’s documentary process. His photographs are not simply peaking into a realm of domesticity that these women command. In this environment, the very yarns of fate are woven by their hands. They dictate their own lives, households, livelihood, motherhood, and band together in a universal aspiration, an admirable moment of sisterhood that does not leave anyone behind. It is a beautiful moment that is shared by Madiha Aijaz’s Moharram (2012), a moment of coming-together that binds all these girls, daughters, sisters, mothers in unison. It is life that is demanded free of shackles; a war cry that makes Shilpa Gupta evoke, I Want To Live With No Fear (2010).