where Three Dreams cross

Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh

(@Whitechapel Gallery, London, E1)

Self-assured and celebratory: this exhibition brings together the works of 82 photographers spanning 150 years, 3 nations and many more (sub-)communities besides. It is quite a remarkable collection, with many of the images being displayed together for the first time.

The exhibition takes as its starting point the "the crucial moment when the power to hold a camera, frame and take pictures was no longer exclusively the preserve of colonial or European photographers". These images of "self-representation" and "self-determination" are presented thematically in five broad groups - The Portrait, The Family, The Performance, The Street, and The Body Politic. The curators have opened themselves up to inevitable critique by presenting in this way, as naturally there is overlap between the categories - but it works. More conventional categorisation would have supressed connections that are there to be made in the eye of the viewer. I enjoyed hearing the echoes whispered between sections, and between time and place.

Unabashedly, it is the content that is strong in this exhibition.

D. Nusserwanji - Studio Portrait, Bombay, c.1940s
Arif Mahmood - Hanuman Temple at Soldier Bazaar, Karachi, 2008

Both above images are black and white prints - the studio portrait having been touched with glitter and paint. Arif Mahmood's three works from Karachi were striking - including this one of the Hanuman Temple at Soldier Bazaar. Painted over beautifully by Shaukat Mahmood (no relation) who died of cancer shortly after completion of the project in March 2009, the images revisit the dying art of the painted photograph as well as bring into play the very contemporary contention over post-production.

A collection of images from the exhibition is nicely presented here. And here are some more:

Above:
1. Anay Mann, About Neetika, 2005
2. Dileep Prakash, Christine Fernandes, Khurda Road, 2005
3. T.S. Satyan, Boys Cooling off on a Summer Day in Bombay, 1970
4. Umrao Singh Sher-Gill, After a Bath: Self-Portrait, 1904
5. Munem Wasif, Illegal Immigrants from Myanmar, 2007

Top:
Gauri Gill, Balika Mela, Lunkaransar, 2003