When the camera weds performing arts

[1]

As children, the camera fascinated nearly all of us. Yashica, Kodak, Hot Shot were some of the popular names when I was growing up in the 90s.

Posing for a picture, flashing our pearly whites, was the most natural, and happy thing to do. A brilliant flash, the sound of the click, and there you had: a moment captured for life. That’s where the power of the camera comes in. It freezes a moment in time, evokes remembrance of the good old days when relooked at, even many, many years later.
But nostalgia is not the only gift of the camera. In the hands of a skilled practitioner, it can provide deep insights into a situation or character and reveal the subtle interplay in human relationships. Take, for instance, performing artistes. A photograph taken of them during their most personal and intense performances would speak for itself for the sheer power of its imagery. No wonder that to capture these finer nuances requires both expertise and perseverance.
Shobha Deepak Singh displays both these qualities in her solo photography exhibition titled Dancescapes. The show exhibits nearly 70 photographs, spanning an unbelievable five decades, of stalwarts like Pandit Birju Maharaj, Sonal Mansingh, Uma Sharma as also several younger artistes like Ashavari Majumdar, Sharmistha Mukherjee and Rajendra Gangani.
Singh has been deeply involved with the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra for the last 50 years. As the director of one of India’s premier performing arts institute, her administrative role is charged with an enthusiasm which comes from her keen love for the performing arts. It is this passion that has led her to become an insightful archivist of some of the most significant performers in the country. Her camera freezes a moment with uncanny precision.
Alka Pande, who curates the show, rightly says, “The main challenge of this show was selecting the photographs for the exhibition from the sheer amount amassed by Shobha over the decades.”
Singh herself created a shortlist of over 3,000 images for the show, out of which she passed Dr Pande over 1,000 images to work with, who, after much deliberation, selected 70 images for the exhibition and 250 for a book also titled Dancescapes, which will be released on the occasion. “The amount of photographs meant balancing the types of performance shown, which became an important factor during selection. From solo performances to operas and epic dance dramas, the images that made it to the exhibition display Indian performing arts in its astounding breadth of guises,” Dr Pande adds. The book has contributions from Dilip Mehta, Justin McCarthy and Kapila Vatsyayan.
Reminisces Singh, “I began photographing as a child with a ‘Roliflex camera’ and later, I was gifted a Yashica. My most memorable photo is of the sunrise in Kanyakumari taken in 1960. It was in 1969 when I bought a Nikon camera to capture a Bharatiya Kala Kendra production, from where there was no looking back. The turning point, however, came in 1996 when Ebrahim Alkazi held a solo show of mine at the Shridharani Art Gallery in New Delhi.”
In the words of Mr Alkazi, “Shobha’s dogged and indefatigable persistence is rewarded by the images captured as a result of her swift, instinctive reflexes. I was often intrigued, and occasionally irritated, by her obsessive preoccupation with the idea of recording rehearsals and performances in the audio-visual form. But all such factors notwithstanding, what the camera seizes upon and exposes can indeed be a revelation, not only for the viewer, but for the actor himself.”
The exhibition is underway at the Visual Arts Gallery in the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, and will conclude on April 2.