The Solitary Moment

For me, there is no such thing as the definitive photograph. The very act of fixing an image in a split-shutter-second suggests the dialogue that may ensue… Does the subsequent viewer see it this way? Or have I missed something vital and telling.

I cloister the viewpoint with constraints I impose, so what claim can there be for objectivity or in more old fashioned terms, for truth. A myriad claims have been made to obfuscate the lens-view. Claims for its selectivity, for possibilities of documentary realism, the new objectivity, creativity’s opportunities through chance or by design, capacities to register significance, sensitivity to the moment. Form, light and imagination maybe the free agents which lend substance to the process of taking a photograph: add the critical decision of the moment to act.

When asked what means most when I take a photograph, I can say truthfully that its satisfaction for me lies in the activity itself. Once I know that the negative is positive, actually seeing the printed photograph does not provide me with as much a reward. The latter inheres in the action of taking the next photograph. Hence I have yet to see the prints of my negatives.

The negative itself, is a momentary record of something I have already seen. Being a tool for varying aspects of perception its value lies in the opportunity it provides for corroboration, for comparison with the perceptions of others. Of course, since I solely harbor a memory of the photograph scene, a print from the negative provides the usual means for such comparison. It is always instructive and a delight therefore to learn that something I have seen can be perceived and understood better through another medium. As when I photograph a building or a section of urban landscape and significant interrelationships I record in the image are interpreted for me in the grammar of another discipline, that of an architect or a civil engineer who may look at the photograph.

So I am definitely not a camera with it “shutter open”, quite passive, recording, not thinking” in the memorable image left to us by Christopher Isherwood. The privacy of the moment – for both, independently the object photographed and for the photographer – is something to cherish. I have often derived the most satisfaction from a photograph that is not taken, precisely because doing so would have disrupted that solitary moment, something precious that I was privileged to observe. In fairness to all, I do not make a living from photography.

Vigorous deshi traditions of life and expressions are reflected in the photographs gathered here, materially linking them as a group. Pervasive features are the free integrity of body language and the evidence of productive manual skills that underpin the built environment – a continual reminder of an alternative Indian urban tradition and way of life outside the major industrial centres. The indignities of the megapolis have no echo here, though the reverse is true for the two photographs taken in Bombay with their flash of wonder, demonism and magic, and a flush of abiding, deeply felt religious fervor.
19.10.91

Solitary Moment: The other India Exhition held at Oxford : Museum of Modern Art, 1982
Seven contemporary photographers : Pablo Bartholomew, Mitter Bedi, Jyoti Bhatt and Raghav Kaneria, T S Nagarajan, Foy Nissen, Dasharath Patel