|
|
 |
 |
| Sunday, 19 October 2003 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
The stillness of a mango grove A travelling exhibition titled 'Indian Poems' opens at the Alliance Francaise de Colombo on October 23, and runs till the 27. It will move to the Alliance Francaise de Kandy on Nov. 7.
The 40 sepia-toned black and white photographs by American photographer Waswo X. Waswo, depict people, places and scenes from everyday life in India. Waswo X. Waswo likes to bring time to a much slower speed. He shows us a world that is seemingly unaffected by things such as cars, computers, and mobile phones. His is a world of quiet intimacy; a world where people still take the time to sit patiently and talk gently; a world full of the many beautiful details we often fail to observe. "There are many similarities between India and Sri Lanka, and there are many people in Sri Lanka who feel a cultural tie to their northern neighbour. I hope that this exhibition can open a window for Sri Lankans, and let them know the country of India just a little better. Maybe for some these photos will also open a window on their own country of Sri Lanka as well," says the photographer. ******
When I was young, I read poetry: Wordsworth, Keats, Shelly, Blake, Dickinson, Whitman... Ginsberg, Williams, Neruda, Snyder, Plath. It is probably significant that at an early age I aspired to be a poet. At the time, I didn't take much of an interest in art. My studies at college led me down the paths of literature. Later, I discovered the camera. The fact that the camera could produce visual poems occurred to me only after becoming acquainted with a pantheon of poets that I had previously overlooked: Atget, Curtis, Saudek, Cameron, Lartigue, Evans, Stieglitz. It became apparent that good photography, like good poems, could distil the chaos of experience into a shimmering concentrate, a liquor that was both lucid and intoxicating. I struggled with my decrepit old Nikon, and an even older Rolleiflex. It was like learning a new grammar, a new way of composing perceptions, emotions and thoughts into rhythms and rhymes. I learned by trial, and many, many errors. The guiding principle was simple: photography, like poetry, had the power to transcend the literal and reshape the everyday. The best of it could cut to the spiritual heart. I do not see myself as a documentarian. I make no claims of revealing cultural realities. In fact, there is a lot of deception in what I do. My photographs include few references to the contemporary. There are no automobiles, no signs proclaiming STD or Internet, no men wearing Nike shoes, Adidas T-shirts, or Rayban sunglasses. This is a stylistic choice that leaves me open to charges of cultural distortion, romanticism, an eye for the exotic, or a self-willed blindness. Yet, I believe my photographs capture a higher truth. The images that speak to me whisper deeper, more archetypal, insights into existence. Like poems, they are often the stuff of dreams; and like dreams, they are laden with meanings hard to articulate in the harsh light of day. I have added new heroes to my lexicon of visual poets. One of these is the late Dr. K. L. Kothary of Palanpur, Gujarat - a photographer that I not only admire, but also collect. The pictorialist aesthetic (of which Dr. Kothary is but one example) has been a guiding influence in my work. Unlike practitioners of "straight" photography, I am not at all afraid of a photograph that looks like a painting, or draws on traditional concepts of composition and beauty. For me, pictorial aesthetics supply one more tool in the ongoing attempt to reach beyond the literal.
This is now my fifth journey through India. I feel, as a westerner, that it is never really possible to fully know this place. The cultural intricacies are too many, India, presumably poor, is in fact rich. That richness is found not in its gold-encrusted palaces and temples, nor the teeming business centres of Mumbai and Bangalore. It is found in the stillness of a mango grove, the chatter near a village well, the grace of an elderly man, the soft curves of a hand-wrought, dark-wood canoe. I have tried to photograph this Indian richness. I try to do more than just picture a cow, an old man, or a monkey. I desperately seek the cow, and the monkey. The monkey I photograph must be deep-eyed, archetypal, and lyrical... the cow, an emblem of all Indian cows. In the same way it is hoped that my portraits not only capture each subject's inherent dignity, but that they also radiate a portion of the universal spirit of mankind. I have already exhibited these photographs in the USA, and now, these showings of Indian poems are my first exhibitions in India and Sri Lanka. Americans and Europeans look at pictures of the subcontinent form a cultural distance. For the Indian audience the veneer of exoticism is stripped away. Here, the photographs can become pictures of the known, the commonplace, the everyday. But it is hoped the sense of poetry, the aura of hidden truth, remains intact. - Waswo X. Waswo |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
