Minds captured
NANDINI NAIR
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A photographer aims to spread awareness about mental health
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Photos like these lash us with reality.
TRUE LIFE One of Tarun Chhabra's photographs.
You remember the photos because they disturb. Stark images of loneliness, pain and abandonment stare out from austere black frames. These are photographs by Tarun Chhabra in collaboration with Manas, a trust working for mental health. "Caring for a... Beautiful Mind", is mounted at the India Habitat Centre as part of Mental Health Day Celebration. The aim of the exhibition is to undo the stigma associated with mental illnesses.
An engineer by profession, his experiments with photography began with the birth of his daughter. He started to compare his daughter's life with the lives of street children. The photos were mounted at a solo exhibition, "Nobody's Children, Myth and Reality".
For ten years
Chhabra admits that working in asylums was very difficult and "the subject is very tough". He worked for 10 months on this project with his Nikon SLR. Finding the use of colour "distracting" and wishing to focus only on the subject, he chose black and white film.
A woman lies on the road. Her face is covered. An Oswal plastic bag standing near her distracts the viewer. In the second glance the viewer sees huge stones placed on her body. Taken in hospitals and asylums, these photos cause an emotional descent for the viewer. They compel a reckoning.
A photo of a boy and a man reminds one of a bhaalu wallah leading his bear. That's because a chain ties the man from his waist. Onlookers in the background gape at the passing show. Another photo captures a boy smiling behind an intricate lattice window. The viewer instinctively smiles back at the child. Till he notices that the child's foot is locked and chained at the window.
Photos like these lash us with reality. They show the violence society metes out to the mentally ill. Society either abandons or shackles them.
Taken variously across North India, many of the photos have been shot in Balaji, Rajasthan. A photo of a whirling dervish is telling. While a woman in the centre of the frame moves in a trance, others simply sit with their back turned to her. This is routine for the people of Balaji, accustomed to the ways of exorcism.
While the focus of the thirty-two 20-inch by 24-inch frames is the mentally ill, there are other photos that aim to show the state of the human mind, be it pensive, attentive or peaceful.
But what do these photos achieve? As the photographer Chhabra says, "We should not reject them because they could be our brothers, sisters, parents, children or even us." But these photos do run the risk of being sensational. As they capture complete destitution devoid of hope.
But finally the purpose is fulfilled by shaking the viewer into a being just a little more humane. The photos would greatly benefit from captions. The exhibition will run in lobbies 5A, 4A, 4B and 6A of the India Habitat Centre till the second week of February.
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