digital MOON  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 60''x 80'' pigment print  2005

Bad moon rising  

- Alexander Keefe

Abul Kalam Azad's latest series of photographs, "Animal," on display at the brand new Ishka Gallery in Kochi, are shot in the color-filter shades of a computerized twilight. In one, a buffalo looms menacingly in the sinister shadows of a color negative, underneath a sky digitally darkened and pasted with an artificial moon. It stands there in the middle of a road staring at the viewer, only reconfirming a truth that some of us have learned the hard way: buffaloes don't like to be photographed. The image, printed on a large canvas, effectively evokes a reaction that fires on multiple registers: it is a cranky animal, you tell yourself. An ill-omened creature. No wonder the demon Mahisha disguised himself as a buffalo. And that thing looks ready to charge. Azad's recent work pursues this sort of honeycombed indexicality, digitally intervening in otherwise straight forward images, interrupting the false photographic promise of simple truth-telling, and casting his animals into the crepuscular space of mysterious and sometimes threatening voodoo. 

There is a kind of chiaroscuro to Mattancherry, the rambling historical spice trading district across the water from Ernakulam's bristling skyline. Its Dutch colonial godowns and storefronts face each other across claustrophobically narrow streets clogged with trucks and handcarts. Lanes and entrances lead back into dark rooms piled with burlap sacks, small roofless open areas tangled in vines and houseplants, old apartments and antique offices cut off from the sun. Its tight corners, palimpsest architecture, and limited vistas nurture a style of localism that borders on introversion: a place of long historical memory, faded cosmopolitanism, local legends, Mattancherry heroes. It is not surprising that the crowded lanes of this unique piece of early modern urban India have attracted artists and galleries, transforming it into a central site for Kerala's busy art scene. 

Abul Kalam Azad's studio is just down the road from the Mattancherry exhibition space of Kochi's best known gallery, Kashi, and walking between the two you pass a number of small galleries filled with the art of young Keralans aspiring to emulate the "Bombay boys," those Kerala-born artists who have made it big in the big city, famous enough to only need one name: Santhosh, Jitish, Shibu, Bose. They might do well to look to the example of Azad instead: he's been there, with long stints in London and New York, and now he's back in his hometown with a lesson to impart: "you have to be local to be international." 

He began his career locally enough, learning his trade by apprenticing with a wedding photography studio. It is an important starting point for understanding his work: his preference for large-format cameras, for composed shots, for iconic images that compress multiple levels of information. The wedding photographer doesn't just passively record and archive local history, he shapes it, providing it with a kind of iconographic structure, a visual grammar that marks its separation from the empty, modernist referentiality of the snapshot. The truth in the wedding photograph is not the truth of a moment captured unawares, a la Cartier-Bresson--a moment that would have happened whether or not the photographer was there--it is more a Mattancherry kind of truth, a man-made truth, one in which the event and the act of transcribing it are inseparably entwined. 

This training laid the groundwork for a photographic sensibility that made Azad dissatisfied when, a few years later, he began working as a photojournalist. He realized, he told me, that "not one image is truthful in what you see in the media." In a sense, his artistic work ever since has been a kind of return to those Mattancherry truths of the wedding studio, to the role of the photographer as an image-maker, not just an image-recorder. Seen in this light, his recent decision to stop shooting photographs and to work instead with images he has shot and assembled over the past twenty-five years makes sense. "Now is not showing," he told me, "now is work." 

A sun in full digital eclipse looks like a black moon haloed in greenish white light, casting crazy shadows on a stone image of a multi-hooded cobra, shrouded in cloth by a worshiper, and nestled in at the base of a tree. In this, one of the most powerful pieces from the "Animals" series, we see an image of an image. The eclipsed sun is a digital intervention, as is the jade-colored twilight that saturates the scene. This is no more a straightforward representation of a snake shrine than the serpentine murti is a straightforward representation of a cobra. And this is precisely the point: everything we see here is a product of an intervention, an artifice that creates a charged space between representation and abstraction where the biological, social and material cross paths. 

The show's images are formally of a piece with the one described above, digitally manipulated shots of animals that play with mythological references and folklore. At their best, they convey a sense of mysterious complexity that draws the viewer in to an associative exchange among these multiple levels of imagination, history and nature. But Azad is a risk taker, and one in the midst of a process of developing a new and highly idiosyncratic approach to image-making, so the fact that the results are mixed should come as no surprise. Some of the weak points in the show are due to the technical difficulties inherent in printing digital images on canvas: a hog rooting around in muck is done entirely in shades of a sickly green very subtly distinguished. The canvas surface doesn't do them justice. Without strong contrasts, the image looks nondescript and muddied. Elsewhere, the digitally inserted moons come off as trite rather than provocative: it is a delicate balance that Azad is working with here, and a brave one.  digital MOON  / photography  ©  Abul Kalam Azad / 60'' x 60'' / 60'' x 80'' pigment print  2005

digital MOON  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 60''x 60'' pigment print  2005

digital MOON  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 60''x 60'' pigment print  2005

digital MOON  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 60''x 60'' pigment print  2005

digital MOON  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 60''x 60'' pigment print  2005

digital MOON  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 60''x 60'' pigment print  2005

devil in god's own country  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 40''x 40'' pigment print  2012

{ Devil in God's own Country }  Wings Flapping of Migratory Birds in an Anarchist’s Fingers

Azad’s Photo's of Harinarayanan’s Room 

In Abul Azad’s visual dictionary the word ‘still life’ is elaborated as follows: the objects related to and resulted by a person’s life and these objects are seen arrayed in a certain fashion as providence would suggest and these objects would remain in the same way as if they were caught in and frozen by time. Their stillness shows that the person who has caused such an arrangement is equally still or methodically careless.

Perhaps, the birth certificate of still life as an artistic genre, written in fourteenth century does not agree with what Azad’s not yet written dictionary says. Still Life as an artistic genre while capturing the beauty and mortality of life also highlighted the skill of the artists who excelled in this genre. Primarily a western religious artistic mode, Still Life became an unavoidable philosophical visual motif for many European artists during the renaissance and the years that followed. When it came to the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, Still Life had become a medium of scientific experiments in art, which later crossed over to the modes of conceptual installations.

Visit the percussionist, Harinarayanan’s room. What you find there is a total commotion of daily objects used or rendered useless by or even emblematized by the anarchist artist Harinarayanan. Azad trains his camera at these objects and the framing itself edits out the wanted from the unwanted. Unwanted here is the space as Harinarayanan occupies a space that is object infested; his tea glass which has not been washed for quite some time, empty cigarette packets, papers, cigarette stubs and so on. When the space is edited out by the eyes of Azad these objects assume the shape of a Still Life, which simultaneously speak of the life of Harinarayanan and narrates a story about the time in which he lives.

Like Harinarayanan, Azad too lives a life of a nomad, an eternal wanderer. While Harinaryanan travels in his subconscious through nicotine and alcohol or weed induced euphoria, Azad travels in the physical space constantly capturing the displaced images that create meaning out of ironic associations. Nomads are dangerous people as they defy settlement and refuse to enter the mainstream life. On the contrary the mainstream life protected by state is always watchful about the nomads who the state believes that are in a perpetual preparation of war against it. An anarchist and nomad who live within the mainstream society in that sense is a threat not because he causes physical danger to others but because his life style itself remains as a constant critique of the normative life values. It tends to threaten the complacency of the people who live in illusionary sense of conformity.

Harinarayanan is a percussionist par excellence. While percussion is mostly related to temple based classical art forms, Harinarayanan operates from outside the religious structures. He has always been a fellow traveler of other anarchists and creatively mad people like late filmmaker John Abraham. In Abraham’s hallmark movie, ‘Amma Ariyan’ (For Mother’s Information) Harinarayanan plays the role of a tabalist who commits suicide. His friends gather from different places and they together go to his mother’s place and slowly the mother becomes the leader of that pack of anarchists who in fact moves against the mainstream values of life. Harinarayanan’s character has become one with the character that he plays in the movie. A friend of many like-minded creative people, Harinaryanan still lives the life of a non-conformist in the city of Kozhikode.

When Azad captures the objects and presences in Harinarayan’s room devoid of Harinarayanan’s physical presence, they in a way tell the story of the person who lives there. In the moments of revolt and self-induced pain and angst, Harinarayanan writes slogans of revolution on his walls. They remain like graffiti written by a revolutionary in exile. Though Still Life connotes the beauty of life and the imminent death, here in Azad’s vision, these photographic still lives emblematize the life of a person who refuses to die and prolongs his life through anarchistic life style and thinking. One cannot forget the lives lived by late John Abraham and A.Ayyappan or D.Vinayachandran, when we look at these photographs. When Azad registers the still life of Harinarayanan we feel how moving a life it is. At the same time that life poses before us a critique of our own lives.

There is a sense of strong identification between Azad and Harinarayanan. In his autobiographical series called ‘My Anger and Other Stories’ Azad brings out a series of still lives from his own life that has brought in anger and pain, love and denial in his own life. Harinarayanan in that sense becomes a surrogate for the artistic self, a character which could be interchanged in subtle ways. Azad’s spiritual seeking at Thiruvannamalai also gets reflected when Harinaryanan writes on his wall, ‘Who am I?’ Such resonances make this series worth pondering. In a sense, each photograph belongs to the genre of still life but the intentionality of the artist transcends it into the zones of documentation, biographical registration and a critique of life, rather than a caution about death.

JohnyML

devil in god's own country  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 40''x 40'' pigment print  2012

devil in god's own country  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 40''x 40'' pigment print  2012

devil in god's own country  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 40''x 40'' pigment print  2012

devil in god's own country  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 40''x 40'' pigment print  2012

devil in god's own country  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 40''x 40'' pigment print  2012

devil in god's own country  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 40''x 40'' pigment print  2012

devil in god's own country  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 40''x 40'' pigment print  2012

devil in god's own country  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 40''x 40'' pigment print  2012

devil in god's own country  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 40''x 40'' pigment print  2012

devil in god's own country  / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 40''x 40'' pigment print  2012

maalivalam of gods / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 20''x20'' pigment print  2013

'Malaivalam' of gods

Free from fear, anger, irritation or sorrow one walks on bare feet

The Holy Mountain of Arunachala rises up with an elevation of 2669 feet (800 m).  The Road encircling the mountain where devotees circumbulate is 8 1/2 miles which is 14 kms long.  On Full Moon days and festival days (like Karthigai, first day of the Tamil month, Tamil New Year day) hundreds of thousands of devotees circumbulate (GIRIVALAM) the mountain and get the blessings of the Lord Arunachala. 

Though devoid of vegetation the hill stands in prominence amidst picturesque surroundings and is visible for miles around. This hill is of Igneous rock (connected with fire) which is one of the four kinds of mountains classified by geology. So one sees the truth behind the tradition regarding the origin and formation of this hill. Our religious philosophy is based on science and there is always the combination of Vignana and Meygnana. These two are inextricably intertwined. An American Geologist has stated about this mountain thus:- "Arunachala should have been thrown up by the earth under the stress of some violent volcanic eruption in the dim ages before even the coal-bearing strata were formed. This rocky mass of granite may be dated back to the earliest epoch of the history of our planet's crust, that epoch which long preceded the vast sedimentary formation in which fossil records of plants and animals have been preserved. It existed long before the gigantic saurians of the pre-historic world moved their ungainly forms through the primeval forests that covred our early earth. It was contemporaneous with the formation of the very crust of earth itself. Arunachala was almost as hoary and as ancient as our planetary home itself"." It was indeed a remnant of the vanished continent (Kumarikandam) of Eunken Lemuria, of which the indigenous legends still keep a few memories. The Tamil traditions not only speak of the vast antiquity of this and other hills, but assert that Himalayas were not thrown up till later. Untold centuries, therefore, pressed their weight upon this time defying pile which arose so abruptly from the plains. The whole peck offers no pretty panorama of regular outline, straight sides and balanced proportions, but rather the reverse. Even its base wanders aimlessly about an eight mile circuit, with several spurs and foot hills, as though unable to make up its mind as to when it shall come to an end. Its substance is nothing but igneous and laterise rock". What a miracle! Such a barren rock has captivated the souls of sages and saints for ages together.

Legends say that Tiruvannamalai was a fire (Agni) mountain in Krathayuga, Gold (Swarna) mountain in Thrathayugha, Copper (Thambra) mountain in Duvaparayuga and rock mountain in this Kaliyuga. 

Arunachala hill has a high status in our sacred tradition and Tamil legends hold that it is far more ancient than the Himalayas which are comparatively known to be of later origin. Arunachala is a combination of two Sanskrit words Aruna and Achala. Aruna means 'red' and Achala means ' immovable' mount, there by known as "Red Mount". It is also called the "Hill of the Holy Beacon" and "Hill of the Holy Fire". The philosophers would give another interpretation for the word Arunachala. Aruna is force(Sakthi) and Achala is Shiva i.e. that which cannot be moved. The Hill therefore represents Shiva and Parvathi. There is still another interpretation Aruna means "Free from Bondage" and Achala means "motionless, steady". The true inner meaning of the word is that one can attain salvation only by concentration on God free from wordly bondage. The popular Tamil name is "Annamalai" which is also a combination of two words 'Anna' and 'malai'. Anna or "attained" and malai means hill. This denotes the story of dispute between Brahma and Vishnu and the philosophic truth behind it. From an inscription in the temple and from the Sanskrit work "Sahitya Retnakara" it is seen that the hill is called as Sonachala(Red Mount). The hill is regarded as Tejo linga(the fire symbol of God) or Jothi linga. It stands at the rear end of the town and the temple is at the foot of the hill.

maalivalam of gods / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 20''x20'' pigment print  2013

maalivalam of gods / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 20''x20'' pigment print  2013

maalivalam of gods / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 20''x20'' pigment print  2013

maalivalam of gods / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 20''x20'' pigment print  2013

maalivalam of gods / photography © Abul Kalam Azad / 20''x20'' pigment print  2013