in which i try and figure out why i don’t like the raghu rai exhibition at the ngma

i need to think this through. as mukul, kuntal and me spent an hour or so wandering through rows and rows of enormous black and white prints and super saturated colours of india blow ups of of ‘classic’ raghu rai images i was left pretty much indifferent. i found the images to be over-framed and unnecessarily ‘constructed’ to a point where the narrative of the image is reduced to the most banal observations made by any traveler to the country., i.e. the ironies of juxtaposition- the old and the new, the rich and poor, the cow and the tractor.
or there is that 'one detail' that is supposed to make the photograph- the two umbrellas in the bottom right corner of a landscape, or the man scratching his crotch in a group shot. the 'punctum' i assume. although i have always thought that the punctum is found by every person within the image for themselves not thrust into your face until it becomes the photograph. it might as well then have been pointed out by placing an arrow on it and letting the rest of the photo disappear.

the over framed makes all into exotic and what passes for content is a simple minded one liner that merely repeats all the cliches of innumerable exotic india brochures. and for the sake of merely, for the lack of a better term, i can only call the ‘oh-how-cool’ factor. spectators of the great indian exotica show are supposed to drop their jaws in disbelief at the great ironies of the subcontinent. you are told what to think when you pause in front of every image like its an illustration of a children’s book.

and but far worse, and this is debatable, were for me the posed celebrity shots of artists. what makes the photographer and his model choose, for example, hariprasad chaurasia on a beach looking wistfully sideways with a flute in his hand as waves crash- as a portrait; or for that matter satyajit ray on a bed twisted on his back and making wild eyes at the camera. what extremely silly imaginations of the artist are being constructed and propagated through these images?

the disaster photographs of the bhopal tragedy were manipulative and coarse in their shameless sentimentality, the bombay photographs repeated cliches of speed and trains and marine drive, the benares photographs showed us half naked wrstlers, praying swamis, naga babas... the only images that did not make me cringe were the photographs of politicians and the immense street and crowd shots that let the image itself do the telling. these were spectacular and beautiful.