Monday, August 10, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
PHOTOS WITH A DIFFERENCE
ABUL KALAM AZAD’S overindulgence with Barthesian ideas, and acts of scratching and drawing images, mainly images of violation like sword, torch etc., on photographs bring forth a picture of witchcraft, finds RAKESH SINHA after a long discussion with the photographer at his residence.
Certainly, there is something noticeable about his photographs. Bold and ethnic, His photographs (or work with photographs?) are surely different from the common run. I come face to face with him at his residence in Noida. Sloping back in on the sofa, he says Hello to me and Good Bye to his ground floor neighbors he had been sipping his first cup of black coffee at the beginning of the day with.
“Let me tell you this” says Abul Kalam Azad, thirty five year old ex-PTI photographer whose solo exhibition at Max Mueller Bhavan photo gallery in New Delhi last year was a widely discussed topic among the photography lovers of the national capital region, “See, photography plays a double role in society as an image making entity. On the one hand it finds out a present reality and on the other it brings into being a reality of its own. Also, as a way of communication, it plays a governing role in our image-saturated planet. Our communication media is so soaked that majority of the images coming cut out remain excess and floating. They compel rather then guide. The overflow of images makes the intended meaning banal”.
Now arises a question that in this atmosphere of complete banality, how does an image work efficiently? Besides its power of creating an illusory demand, how does it exactly make an actual understanding of the message, which it carries? The variance between the banality of an image and its competence of communication is very discriminating. Consequently, the artist who works with an image, chiefly that of a photograph, should be very cautious to discern this subtlety.
States Azad, “actually we should be grateful to scientific advancements, the field of photography has attained an untoward advancements in recent years. Its application in cinema and computerized visuals has changed all the pre-existing theories of photography. The observation made by Sontag, Berger and Barthes find their individual limitations in the contemporary visual arena. Though these theories are still applicable, the day-to-day progress in photography demands a more fundamental approach in its uses as well as in its reading.
His photographs require such a different approach for their successive reading. Surely, there is something blasphemous in the transformation of a news cameraman into an artist who uses photographs for his creative expression. The blasphemy lies in his courageous effort to subvert the usual standards attributed a photojournalist. The experts in Indian photography must often follow a set standard. “Photography makes strange things familiar and familiar things strange” says Sontag, “and therefore has a depersonalizing effect.” This depersonalization of Indians, whether from rural and metros capes by the experts made India an object of consumption.
After visualizing Abul Kalam Azad’s pictures one notice that this lensman’s shots denies this sort of objectification. He has taken pictures of racial type, not only in India but also overseas the photographer has depicted the working boys in Mumbai streets as well as the historic sculpture in Mumbai city squares. However, his special choosing of right angles prohibits them from being museum objects or mysterious pieces.
When we go through the history of photography we find that by the third decade of the 19th century, photography began discovering the surrounding within painterly exposures. Since then, irrespective of the models objectified by photography, it has been obsessed by the shadow of the canvas. However, certain fundamental approach taken by some baring photographic craftsman liberated this skill from the bondage of painting. Subsequently, it could practice a kind of commanding force on other visual arts.
Susan Sontag, in her book ‘on photography’ says that the images set our demands upon truth and are themselves coveted alternative for first-hand knowledge. “in fact, the social role photography carries out as an image making individual has to be observed in especial critical perspectives. Image making is a political as well as economical movement. In present societies production and consumption perform a principal part. The act of contemplating done by images assists the product to approach a good number of patrons”, comments the lensman.
Azad is definitely a person who is equally skilled, both, in taking and defining methods of photography. He scratches on photographs. The act of sketching and illustrating images, mostly images of transgression like torch, sword etc., on photographs brings forth a sort of magic. Violation is violated boldly, and the out come could be a renaissance.
“Photography itself is a defilement of the privacy of someone or something. The clicking f the shutter of a camera is similar to a death knell. In the act of photography, a violation and killing occur together. Once this chemical images are presented as they are, it would be a reassertion of violation”, clarifies Azad.
Moreover, Azad makes different violation on the photographs, which already is a outcome of the principal violation. In all fairness, deriving a homogeneous notion about his works is a complex matter. Due to the diversity in the procedure of work, composition and bestowal, his work fall in and out of an analytical slot. The trouble that he finds at times in contouring his works as well as himself in the present art discourses seems mostly because of his intemperance with Barthesian concepts.
To Barthes, photography is one more form of death. He approaches political power of photography in entirely phenomenological terms. According to him, the surface of a photograph is a coating, which distances it from living society. In turn, by enacting the role of a spectator society parts itself from the photographic representation with it’s own outer layer i.e. the skin.” This distancing method is continued in the act of photographing as well. The experience of photography lies in the observed object and the subject observing”, tells Azad.
Once again Barthes stresses this identical experience in terms of genuine objectification. The role changes occur in the observed subject and the subject observing. This ultimately makes the consequent experience (the photograph) an object of the museum. The miscellaneous forces working in the act of observing and the experience of being observed become clearer in profile photography as Roland Barthes says in ‘Camera Lucida’ that profile photography is a closed field of forces. Four images repertories appeal here, object and cross each other. In front of the lens, I am at the same time the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of, to exhibit his art.”
Azad’s photographs have excellence of quality, which impress connoisseurs of art. The artist in him is ever present in his work and creative art is enjoyed and appreciated by experts and the general public. His two-dimension works find their way directly into the discourse of contemporary social life. He denies the negation, and violates the violation. In turn, the resultant works swings between the social dialectics like spiritualism and fundamentalism, creation and distraction, pacifism and fascism. “The history of human civilization could be seen as the shift of human beings from their nomadic uncertainty to a settled fixity. But that was not the end of all. For them, invading other territories and building up architectural structures, to live and rule, were as important as making settlements in one’s own territory. In this sense, architectures all over the world stand evidence to civilization growth, symbol of invasion, seat of power. What becomes minimal in comparison with the overpowering architecture is the mass of human beings, which always remains stripped off of power”, says Azad.
As his contemporary photographs say that he never misses the chance to help people see the reasonableness of the other people’s viewpoints. “It is a matter of disposition, I conjecture. I observe it is possible to contribute. The idea is simply trying to become a beter human being and you cannot better in isolation. You have to improve living in society or in the household. If you like doing something, you will certainly do it well. So just do what do you like. I believe in it,” states Azad.
It is superficiality that bothers him “One must realize, no matter whatever it is – photography, relationship or one’s own self-development, that one is barely scratching the surface when one could do so much more as a human being. Even the sky is no limit, there are possibilities beyond sky,” resonates the sensitive cameraman.
Lastly, what is the concept behind the new series of your photographic works? I position a question. “in fact, it attempts a re-reading of history, which is a merciless fusion of incidents with monumental architectures. Except heroes, ordinary people are apparently absent from this history. Using the same tool that chisel history out of a block of ‘real’ human experiences, I bring out a parody of it, which makes an active intervention in the common illustrative discourse of history done mainly through the beautiful pictures by the archaeological department and by the tourist photographs”, says the photographer.
RAKESH SINHA, SAP, 1997.
Certainly, there is something noticeable about his photographs. Bold and ethnic, His photographs (or work with photographs?) are surely different from the common run. I come face to face with him at his residence in Noida. Sloping back in on the sofa, he says Hello to me and Good Bye to his ground floor neighbors he had been sipping his first cup of black coffee at the beginning of the day with.
Now arises a question that in this atmosphere of complete banality, how does an image work efficiently? Besides its power of creating an illusory demand, how does it exactly make an actual understanding of the message, which it carries? The variance between the banality of an image and its competence of communication is very discriminating. Consequently, the artist who works with an image, chiefly that of a photograph, should be very cautious to discern this subtlety.
States Azad, “actually we should be grateful to scientific advancements, the field of photography has attained an untoward advancements in recent years. Its application in cinema and computerized visuals has changed all the pre-existing theories of photography. The observation made by Sontag, Berger and Barthes find their individual limitations in the contemporary visual arena. Though these theories are still applicable, the day-to-day progress in photography demands a more fundamental approach in its uses as well as in its reading.
His photographs require such a different approach for their successive reading. Surely, there is something blasphemous in the transformation of a news cameraman into an artist who uses photographs for his creative expression. The blasphemy lies in his courageous effort to subvert the usual standards attributed a photojournalist. The experts in Indian photography must often follow a set standard. “Photography makes strange things familiar and familiar things strange” says Sontag, “and therefore has a depersonalizing effect.” This depersonalization of Indians, whether from rural and metros capes by the experts made India an object of consumption.
After visualizing Abul Kalam Azad’s pictures one notice that this lensman’s shots denies this sort of objectification. He has taken pictures of racial type, not only in India but also overseas the photographer has depicted the working boys in Mumbai streets as well as the historic sculpture in Mumbai city squares. However, his special choosing of right angles prohibits them from being museum objects or mysterious pieces.
When we go through the history of photography we find that by the third decade of the 19th century, photography began discovering the surrounding within painterly exposures. Since then, irrespective of the models objectified by photography, it has been obsessed by the shadow of the canvas. However, certain fundamental approach taken by some baring photographic craftsman liberated this skill from the bondage of painting. Subsequently, it could practice a kind of commanding force on other visual arts.
Susan Sontag, in her book ‘on photography’ says that the images set our demands upon truth and are themselves coveted alternative for first-hand knowledge. “in fact, the social role photography carries out as an image making individual has to be observed in especial critical perspectives. Image making is a political as well as economical movement. In present societies production and consumption perform a principal part. The act of contemplating done by images assists the product to approach a good number of patrons”, comments the lensman.
Azad is definitely a person who is equally skilled, both, in taking and defining methods of photography. He scratches on photographs. The act of sketching and illustrating images, mostly images of transgression like torch, sword etc., on photographs brings forth a sort of magic. Violation is violated boldly, and the out come could be a renaissance.
“Photography itself is a defilement of the privacy of someone or something. The clicking f the shutter of a camera is similar to a death knell. In the act of photography, a violation and killing occur together. Once this chemical images are presented as they are, it would be a reassertion of violation”, clarifies Azad.
Moreover, Azad makes different violation on the photographs, which already is a outcome of the principal violation. In all fairness, deriving a homogeneous notion about his works is a complex matter. Due to the diversity in the procedure of work, composition and bestowal, his work fall in and out of an analytical slot. The trouble that he finds at times in contouring his works as well as himself in the present art discourses seems mostly because of his intemperance with Barthesian concepts.
To Barthes, photography is one more form of death. He approaches political power of photography in entirely phenomenological terms. According to him, the surface of a photograph is a coating, which distances it from living society. In turn, by enacting the role of a spectator society parts itself from the photographic representation with it’s own outer layer i.e. the skin.” This distancing method is continued in the act of photographing as well. The experience of photography lies in the observed object and the subject observing”, tells Azad.
Once again Barthes stresses this identical experience in terms of genuine objectification. The role changes occur in the observed subject and the subject observing. This ultimately makes the consequent experience (the photograph) an object of the museum. The miscellaneous forces working in the act of observing and the experience of being observed become clearer in profile photography as Roland Barthes says in ‘Camera Lucida’ that profile photography is a closed field of forces. Four images repertories appeal here, object and cross each other. In front of the lens, I am at the same time the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of, to exhibit his art.”
Azad’s photographs have excellence of quality, which impress connoisseurs of art. The artist in him is ever present in his work and creative art is enjoyed and appreciated by experts and the general public. His two-dimension works find their way directly into the discourse of contemporary social life. He denies the negation, and violates the violation. In turn, the resultant works swings between the social dialectics like spiritualism and fundamentalism, creation and distraction, pacifism and fascism. “The history of human civilization could be seen as the shift of human beings from their nomadic uncertainty to a settled fixity. But that was not the end of all. For them, invading other territories and building up architectural structures, to live and rule, were as important as making settlements in one’s own territory. In this sense, architectures all over the world stand evidence to civilization growth, symbol of invasion, seat of power. What becomes minimal in comparison with the overpowering architecture is the mass of human beings, which always remains stripped off of power”, says Azad.
As his contemporary photographs say that he never misses the chance to help people see the reasonableness of the other people’s viewpoints. “It is a matter of disposition, I conjecture. I observe it is possible to contribute. The idea is simply trying to become a beter human being and you cannot better in isolation. You have to improve living in society or in the household. If you like doing something, you will certainly do it well. So just do what do you like. I believe in it,” states Azad.
It is superficiality that bothers him “One must realize, no matter whatever it is – photography, relationship or one’s own self-development, that one is barely scratching the surface when one could do so much more as a human being. Even the sky is no limit, there are possibilities beyond sky,” resonates the sensitive cameraman.
Lastly, what is the concept behind the new series of your photographic works? I position a question. “in fact, it attempts a re-reading of history, which is a merciless fusion of incidents with monumental architectures. Except heroes, ordinary people are apparently absent from this history. Using the same tool that chisel history out of a block of ‘real’ human experiences, I bring out a parody of it, which makes an active intervention in the common illustrative discourse of history done mainly through the beautiful pictures by the archaeological department and by the tourist photographs”, says the photographer.
RAKESH SINHA, SAP, 1997.
'Untouchables'
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'UNTOUCHABLES' photography © abulkalamazad / pigment print 40"x40" |
"For the past six years, I have been working on the photographic project "Untouchables". The images are based on autobiographical reality and an understanding of everyday life. My work makes an active intervention in the common illustrative discourse of history. The images reflect and relates to the socio-political references. All the images are based on poets, literatures, politicians and objects. It is an ode to eminent people like Gandhiji,
Nataraja Guru, M.G.R, Kumaran Asan, Krishna Pillai, Medha Patkar, my mother. . . who have left an indelible stamp on the social, cultural and political sphere. They are "Untouchables" in the context of their stature, their achievements and so these documents hold timeless images dressed in modem metaphor" says Abul Kalam Azad.
Haunting, elegaic, amusing, and poetic, Abul Kalam Azad's images intersect and cross the boundaries of memory, art, culture, social life and politics, on the levels of personal memories, photographic recording, digital logic and illogic, fine art and pop art. Absolutely not releasing their secrets upon first viewing, these images continue to deliver and play with memory, not only the communal memory of Indian history and historical
figures, but also the personal remembrances of the artist often relating to his land, Kerala, and finally, the recent memory of the viewer who questions what he has just seen. Memory. Something we all have, remembrances of things past, personal and communal. But do we remember exactly or do we think we remember?
Abul's images, served up, many of them, in a Pop art style, for a retro effect, play with his South Indian Keralan, consciousness and evoke feelings of his native land. Using his and other’s old sepia-tinted photographic albums and images from other sources, everything is appropriated and recombined, as he says, a "re-looking" and a "re-doing", creating tableaux where himself, or his family or friends or architecture share the same stage as figures from history, gurus, leaders, politicians to create an image that resonates across time and space. Charlemagne is suddenly standing at the Indian school gate in 'Burgher Street'. The pretty, beautiful face of 'Rajan' is the 'missing' face that stood for the Kerala victims of lndian dictatorship, a consequence of the emergency declared in 1975-76. Against a backdrop of 'Tower Bridge', is illuminated native memory of the homeland. 'Ann-vesham': the artist himself as magnetic Kathakali figure, the classical dance drama of Kerala, is positioned against classical colonial sculpture with a historical temple as background. The personal and the socio-political are expertly intermingled in these images that successfully blend both digital and analogue photography. Some images have chaotic strokes and lines, almost 'brushstrokes' that mock the logic of digital to show the illogicality of the medium and interpolate the 'hand' of the artist, gently evoking memories of that age old discourse of
the validity of photography against painting, where the hand of the artist is presumed to make painting more desirable. And then, of course, there is color, applied ever so skillfully, bringing feminine and masculine closer together, lighting up aspects of a sepia tinted past, hovering and illuminating a democratic industrial workers cooperative: 'Kerala Dinesh Beedi', a successful attempt at workers' self management in a cigarette producing factory, as the artist says: "A portrait of action that lives on!"
"Abul Kalam Azad's new work 'Untouchables' transforms personal history through iconic local images that have punctuated the history of India, and Kerala in particular. Utilizing a wide range of allusions drawn through rare historical images of regional personalities, landmarks and symbolic objects" says George Thundiparambil.
Peter Louise , RL Fine Arts 2007 New-York
"Abul Kalam Azad's new work 'Untouchables' transforms personal history through iconic local images that have punctuated the history of India, and Kerala in particular. Utilizing a wide range of allusions drawn through rare historical images of regional personalities, landmarks and symbolic objects" says George Thundiparambil.
Peter Louise , RL Fine Arts 2007 New-York
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photography © abulkalamazad / pigment print 40"x40" |
On Photography
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|
UNTOUCHABLES .
photography © Abul Kalam Azad 2005 ,pigment prints 40''x40'' |
'' Frontal Encounters ''
“Let that be. It can only be said that the pot seen by us was not there at the site where we were not present and not that it was there. If on the other hand it was there we must have with us someone who was present there. It is possible to say that the seer was there at the spot where it was seen and not where it was unseen. If there is no such seer, nothing is seen. It is thus clear that this pot was not there before but came to shine forth at this moment.”
- Narayana Guru
In this series of work, Abul Kalam Azad frontally communicates with his sharp black and white images, radically forcing his way out of a voyeur’s position to stand as a photographer; to turn his iconic documentation into the statement of an image-maker. In the 1990s, Abul traveled extensively the length and width of North India, and documented the unmistakable scar of time, the dilemma of post-emergency India—the erupting quest of the haunted sphinx of history at the foreground of a degenerating architecture of faith. This is evident in the set of work that deals with the violent message of an unending search for identity. The sense of belonging with a human conscience—socio-political and cultural—playing the protagonist, and sipping the historical loss and alienation from one’s own history.
Divine Façades is a series of frontal encounters, one gets lost in their directness and simplicity. We encounter a silhouetted palm against a muted skyline with a structure from the Lodi period, a pre-Mughal evidence of Muslim architecture in India. It is an autobiographical work, a self-portrait, the artist says. A dedication to the poetic architecture of the art of photography, Azad shuffles his visual experiences and signs a declaration about the polity of his search into the tissues of Indian history. A palm blocking a frame with a Lodi time architecture on top of the surface, Azad scribbles with a pin. This is a political way of emphasizing a historical point, in defence of history. In the context of the demolition of Babri Masjid, these images stand at the historical frontier of human resistance. Azad deploys the powerful language of human presence, the presence of man before history… the humblest people with no air of power around them. The portraits’ cut and closed up textures of life become biographical with the manual scribbling, thus making a statement on the individual history of the ‘ant hill’—‘people of a nation’. Frontally, these portraits cut the surface into two inaccessible halves and become monumental.
Azad travels through his sense of history with his conscious tool—his camera—and scales out a chronical of a text of visual history of a most troubled time in the human socio-political context of India. Before the Blue Mosque, the man with a cat reminds us of the forgotten story of a culture, of a life full of textural commonness that depicts a story. The story of a decoded reality in which a cat easily crossed in through a scroll of Persian miniature straight at the middle of life itself.
One torso, one horn of a massive black bovine form, a resting bicycle, the architectural background, ball pen scribbles and finally, scars, are collectively depicting something more than just a symbolic implication. Researching on neo-realistic idiom, Azad reveals the frame with the true scar of time, thus opening a dialogue with his audience in a frank and forward gesture. Azad resists the distorting modes of power by foregrounding the testimony of being.
Black Mother is the continuation of Azad’s cultural search for the archetypal Mother image that started with his Goddesses (1998). The Goddesses of the 4th century, the Goddesses of the 20th-21st century, and the Mother Goddesses of pre-history are the field of his study. The point is to encounter the reality in the primordial nature of this pre-historic popular icon that is Mother, within the context of time within. The biological ancientness boils into the blackness of the photographs, exploring the utmost human possibility of the medium of Photography. The black here ceases to remain a color in order to become the darkness of the Garva Greeha, the womb. The snaps of the temple wall, dripping with oil, profoundly narrate the science of the human urge for religion. They reveal the basics of human nature and iconographic symbolism in a pure abstract graphic interpretation. In this series, Azad studies the body of religion and finds its pimples of non-spiritual elements: faith, fanatism and social trance, letting his audience experience them through the classified visuals.
Azad presents a set of disturbing clues from his visual-anthropological research in a specific time that urgently needs to have a close look at the ‘ant hill’ that is the ‘people of a nation’, and he succeeds in identifying the graphic lines of human struggle, incessantly growing on the skin of life and time as the testimony of survival.
Kabita Mukhopadhyay
Cochin 2003
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