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A bit of this, a bit of that

Lens-eye A photograph of a group of flamingoes shot by P.V. Sivakumar at the exhibition Palash Haldar’s canvas of Gandhi

Group shows are like the Numaish. The exhibition of assorted stuff like chapati makers, homes, TVs, furniture, and where you end up just eating at Agra Chatwala instead of making any decisions.

The exhibition called ‘August Window’ now on show at Kalahita is a similar experience. Enter and you don’t know where to begin or what to see.

Inaugurated on Independence Day, right at the entrance is a Palash Haldar canvas with a grey Gandhi in one golden rectangle -- inside is another of Palash’s work: An untitled acrylic that has an empty street of a colonial city with just the face of a majestic Bengal tiger and small red flags fluttering from the windows of the buildings.

Like the man entering the electronic goods shop and the woman entering the clothes shop, a few paintings grab the attention while the rest are ignored or remain in the background.

Pity, if you stand in front of paintings executed by Masuram Ravikanth rich with symbolism or the naively subtle art of Mahesh Pottabathini. These are just two names and two merits, the other nine artists too have an equally good claim to skill, craftsmanship, inspiration and creativity.

A woman in pink sari, gritted teeth, throwing a rock at police, a bunch of women holding up quart bottles of liquor, woman wailing over the victim of police firing in Khammam, a tiger drinking from a plastic bottle, the blood and gore spilling out of a helmet moments after the accident, and a women playing shehnai.

News photographers are lucky blokes who get to capture images that set the tone of debate and are worth thousands of words. They do it and what’s written is erased in a trice. So, when the news photographers hold a show a show of their recent works at Ravindra Bharati, it is like revisiting the year, the memories come flashing into the mind. The photographs captured the irony of an India that’s changing as well as not changing.

The images of poverty are aplenty, while that of pelf are a few. A toddy tapper quenching his thirst with Thums Up, or a woman lighting up a fag, or a buffalo’s horns being turned into a hangar for a shopping bag.

Palash Haldar’s canvas of Gandhi

The enduring images are those captured over the year, the images of struggle being waged by the poor and the landless against the might of the state. Waving pitiably small red flags, you can hear both the thwack, thwack of the policeman’s baton as well as dum, dum of the bullets as they slam shamefully starved bodies.

If anyone says 60th year of Indian Independence, they should see the image of a beggar painted like Gandhi’s statue begging on a flooded street in Kurnool. Pity there were no captions to place the photographs in context and no information about the light, the aperture and shutter speed used to capture the images.

Elsewhere in the city, at the British Library, staff photographer P.V. Sivakumar showed his images captured over the past three years.

If another set of photographers brought home the immediacy of news, Sivakumar’s work showed the eye of an artist and an understanding of light.

Flamingoes flying out of halo of the sun, from the ball of fire into a colourful sky, or the vantage point view of the Secunderabad clock tower that showed the kind of colours only an artist can conjure up or the positing of a bunch of school children crossing the road in front of a vehicle.

A show that proved that into the wider canvas of news, even art and eye can fit in to create brilliance.

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