Straddling two worlds
SHALINI UMACHANDRAN
CALCUTTA — Repossessing the City: Leena Kejriwal; Om Books International, 4379/4B, Prakash House, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110002.
Photography is, by nature, based on creating and evoking a feeling of nostalgia — the capturing of a moment, a person, or a place to be remembered for the future. And all photographs are essentially of the past — for even if the photograph captures the present, there is a discontinuity between the photographing and the viewing.
In this book, Calcutta: Repossessing the City, Leena Kejriwal has used this trait of photography to reclaim her city, to hold on to the "innate, quirky resilience" of Calcutta, while showing the "new layers" of Kolkata.
As art critic John Berger has said a photograph isolates a particular instant or instance and only gives the impression of carrying forward into the present. Unlike a lived past, a photograph can never really lead to the present. Kejriwal attempts to use this very discontinuity — between the moment of recorded and the present moment of looking — to establish that her city "straddles two worlds, the old and the new."
In her quest to "rediscover" Calcutta, Kejriwal starts at the north of the city with the river Hooghly and travels along its length, capturing the sleepy laziness of life on the ghats of a river that was once a crucial arterial trade route, and observes that the city has taken to growing "with its back to the river."
Durga and Kali-mata, of course, get their due, in the section on the clay potters and idol makers of Kumartuli. Chitpur or "black town" as it was known in the days of the Raj, where the "natives" lived, is now the religious and commercial heart of the city. The market area is at once gloomy and grimy, bustling and bright. Temples, mosques, churches and places of worship figure often in her book — the many famous Kali temples, the ghats, devotees lost in prayer, pujaris and idols; she takes us through Kalighat and into the Imambara at Metiabruz. Communities, neighbourhoods and people are her path to capturing the essence of the city, as she puts it.
Perspectives
An essay by historian Tapati Guha Thakurta anchors Kejriwal's photographs, situating her work within a framework and exploring the questions of "outsider" and "insider" perspectives of city photography. These are interesting questions, especially since Kejriwal has lived and grown up in Kolkata, and has kept rediscovering the city, as she puts it, through her camera lens.
Kejriwal seems to have chosen to leave out the over-exposed snapshots of Durgapuja processions and other City of Joy-type imagery that seems to have become symbolic of Calcutta. She does allow herself one panoramic view of Howrah Bridge (seemingly unavoidable when one chronicles Kolkata in any way), and the city's usual showpieces — Victoria Memorial, Howrah Bridge, Governor House, the Maidan, the trams on College Street — find their place, but she pays greater attention to capturing the mood and atmosphere of the city.
Capturing change
As the "repossessing" in the title implies, Kejriwal has attempted to recover the "old" Calcutta, while conveying a sense of the change that has taken place. She presents a city that seems to be brooding over its past and yet looking ahead.
Khejriwal's subjects are both interesting and touching — the bookstores and their patrons, the famous Coffee House, the crumbly façade of the railway quarters, a bright sari in a doorway, an unidentifiable but delicious-looking snack sizzling in a kadai on a street, a granny shopping, a potato vendor enjoying a slice of watermelon, and the old-world charm of small stores — the tailor, the watchmaker, an `eczema' specialist... Quirky signs and simple doorways get as much attention as ponderous monuments.
Her interest in street art is evident from the way she chooses to pay tribute to West Bengal's famous sons — peeling posters of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, a portrait of Rabindranath Tagore hanging on the back of a cycle rickshaw. A mural of the 2006 Football World Cup, complete with Ronaldhino and Ronaldo, represents Calcutta's frenzied football fans.
For the most part, Kejriwal's "insider" view of the city and its spaces is intimate and beautiful, linking it to the past while evoking a sense of the current character of the city.
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