Walk into Cymroza Art Gallery for The Epic and The Elusive, a set of photographs that still motion while making it visible. The show opens today and offers a look into a series that was taken by Naveen Kishore, photographer, poet and publisher at Seagull Books, in the 1990s when he used to work closely with theatre groups in Manipur.
<img title="Performers on stage captured unconstrained by the conventions of the &lsquo;still image&rsquo;. Pics courtesy/Naveen Kishore from The Epic and the Elusive" src="http://origin.mid-day.com/images/2022/apr/Captured-in-motion-b_e.jpg" alt="Performers on stage captured unconstrained by the conventions of the &lsquo;still image&rsquo;. Pics courtesy/Naveen Kishore from The Epic and the Elusive" width="1280" height="720" />Performers on stage captured unconstrained by the conventions of the &lsquo;still image&rsquo;. Pics courtesy/Naveen Kishore from The Epic and the Elusive
Looking through the 25 black and white photographs, the first words that come to mind are &lsquo;a fury of motion and movement.&rsquo; The figures in the frame are blurred to the point where some of them almost vanish, becoming, as the show&rsquo;s curator Ranjit Hoskote shares, &ldquo;Two tangents of a perspective &mdash; epic and elusive.&rdquo; The performers captured in the photographs seem to elude not the camera, but the moment in which motion is born, to move on and keep going &mdash; a cue to the times when they were taken while Manipur was in the midst of insurgency and violence. Kishore says, &ldquo;Consider them as an act of bearing witness to a particular and troubled time in history.&rdquo; The photographs that were first published in Seagull Theatre Quarterly&rsquo;s issue 14/15 document groups performing humanitarian-political theatre under state-led authoritarian control.
<img title="Naveen Kishore. Pic/Sunandini Banerjee" src="http://origin.mid-day.com/images/2022/apr/Captured-in-motion-c_e.jpg" alt="Naveen Kishore. Pic/Sunandini Banerjee" width="1280" height="720" />Naveen Kishore. Pic/Sunandini Banerjee
Kishore shares that in approaching two contradictory media &mdash; photography that freezes and stills movement, and theatre &mdash; the challenge for him was to capture that movement and leave the viewer with the possibility of its original movement. &ldquo;These images have become &lsquo;mirrors&rsquo; into what we have become &mdash; immune to the atrocities around us,&rdquo; the photographer tells us. Referencing works like Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and The Mahabharata to note the power of theatre, Hoskote notes that theatre has a universal and perennial dimension in speaking about fundamental human experiences like loss, grief, solidarity and upheaval, which is what makes it relevant. Kishore&rsquo;s suggestion in approaching the works in the show is to relate to them in the light of the political upheavals around us.
<img title="Ranjit Hoskote. Pic/Priyesha Nair" src="http://origin.mid-day.com/images/2022/apr/Captured-in-motion-d_e.jpg" alt="Ranjit Hoskote. Pic/Priyesha Nair" width="1280" height="720" />Ranjit Hoskote. Pic/Priyesha Nair
Till May 16, from 11 am to 7 pm (except Sundays) At Cymroza Art Gallery, Bhulabhai Desai Road, Breach Candy. Free
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This exhibition of photographs by Naveen Kishore shares a view of the past while strengthening our response to the present

Captured in motion

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Captured in motion

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