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Magazine
LENS EYE
Lyrical images
MURALI N. KRISHNASWAMY
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An inherited way of looking at India as a timeless space or a celebration of beauty? India Poems will evoke mixed reactions.
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Waswo states that he does not see himself as a documentarian. He makes no claims to revealing cultural realities...
Photographs by Waswo
PEOPLE AND PLACES: Pillar by the sea in Kochi.
India Poems: The Photographs, Waswo X. Waswo, A Gallerie Publication, 2006, Mumbai, p.155, price not stated.
IN a write-up in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (January 7, 2004), titled "Waswo captures true richness of India", staff writer James Auer says, "The horror of colonialism comes in many forms: intellectual, political, economic, sociological. But there is also such a thing as photographic colonialism. And many camera users, especially those who live in Europe and North America, are guilty of it. They traipse blithely through the Third World, gathering eye-popping vistas much as rich tourists a century ago scooped up sacred statuary. Then they return home and display their work. The indigenous people who are the subjects of all this unsought — and, often, unwelcome — scrutiny seldom get to see the finished pictures that portray them and their private lives. All of which is wrong, wrong, wrong. At least that's the belief of the Milwaukee-born camera artist and poet who signs his work `Waswo X. Waswo.'"
This is indeed the undercurrent in India Poems: The Photographs, a book of images that may not yield itself up to just one read... A picture is worth a thousand words, and it may be left to the viewer and reader of this collection to arrive at his own conclusions about its author Waswo X. Waswo's exercise.
Conscious choice
Untitled portrait, Karnataka.
Waswo (formerly Richard Waswo) states that he does not see himself as a documentarian. He makes no claims to revealing cultural realities... There are no automobiles, no signs proclaiming STD or Internet, no men wearing Nike shoes, Adidas T-Shirts, or Rayban sunglasses. It is a stylistic choice that leaves him open to charges of cultural distortion, romanticism, an eye for the exotic, or a self-willed blindness. Yet, he believes his photographs capture a higher truth, he says.
* * *
India Poems: The Photographs, a body of work that has its earliest photograph taken in 1999, and which then works its way up to 2004, is about a series of images, portraits, landscapes and genre scenes, says Waswo; visual equivalents of short, lyrical poems.
Each rich, sepia image swam up to Waswo, completely different from the one he had placed in the (developer) bath, fostering an element of nostalgia. Most are the result of this (chemical) process, but there are others too that are the creations of an old Nikon FE2 and Roliflex.
Rajasthani man, Jaisalmer.
The result is 69 images, where what is clearly ignored are two much-in-the-limelight Indias: the Modern India that is a "force in software development, call centre services, commodities and the entertainment industry", and the Tourist India that is plastered in the "travel brochures and web sites". In Waswo's journey, what is in focus is Rural India.
Thus there are the titles: "Street Photographer - Jaipur 2004", "The Feni Makers - Goa, 2004", "Woman with a Scarf - Himachal Pradesh, 2003", "Fisherman - Cochin 2003", "Ritual Shower - Tirumala, 2003", "Near the River's Edge - Kerala, 2002", "The Shopkeeper's Desk - Kerala, 2002", "Reading the News - Mattancherry, Cochin, 2002", "In the Rice Fields - Karnataka, 2002", "View from the Monkey Temple - Hampi, 2001", "Cross Before a Goan Home - Arambol, 2002", "My Private Driver, Jaitu - Pushkar, 1999", "Untitled Portrait - Hampi, 2002" ... a range that is varied and vivid, and from across Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Rajasthan. The diverse, and often solitary, subjects the lens has captured face the camera, shy, contemplative, content, enthusiastic and accepting
Of all the titles mentioned, the last one is Waswo's "talking point" portrait. In it is framed Cupendra, a victim of polio, who is supposed to have come to the village as a beggar, asking foreign tourists for alms, but as time went by, saved enough money to buy a coracle and use on the Tungabhadra. Today, Cupendra is self-reliant, and his photograph is, for Waswo, one that "speaks for itself".
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Adding value to the book are critical essays, by Dr. Curtis Carter, Dr. Shreeniwasan Ayyar, John Shimon and Julie Lindemann, and Dr. H.S. Chandalia among others, that look at the issue of analysing the photographs. (Are they candid, yet posed, portraits? Exotic oddities in deliberately old-fashioned sepia monochrome? India through the eyes of an Indophile? Or an expression (Western) of escaping from the materialism of the West?) Of these, "Photographing the Natives", by Pushpamala N., is worth noting.
Beyond the images
This is not a mere book of photography, says Waswo, now practically a resident of India. To this, says Pushpamala, "India is a bustling diverse country ... We are a politically aware modern democracy, yet these photographs are images of the `Eternal Orient' stilled in time. The scenes are chosen to present a country hardly touched by industry, a land quaint and exotic and archaic. Waswo is unable to escape from an inherited way of seeing the Indian landscape."
As stated earlier, Waswo is aware of the misgivings that his photographs could evoke. But, as writer, poet and curator Ranjit Hoskote, who makes an appeal in the Foreword, says, in a world where beauty is viewed with suspicion and scorn, treat Waswo's photographs as an "outright appreciation of beauty".
"Ah, India!"
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