“The artless beauty of tribal life and times” (Bastar): Interview with photographer Manoj Kumar Jain – Chhattisgarh

By Sunil Gupta, The Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk), 1 February 2010

Photograph: Muria Tribal Boys at the Benur Village weekly market by Manoj Kumar Jain, 2002

Artist and curator Sunil Gupta has distilled the history of photography in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh into a landmark exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Gallery. In a series of articles for the Telegraph.co.uk he picks his favourite images from a collection spanning 150 years. […]

Several things struck me simultaneously; his presentation style was unusually polished, and limited to this “story” that he was pursuing in his own time. He had a quiet but determined air about him and the way he talked about his pictures. I was very struck by their grace and style. Indigenous people the world over have historically been the subject of a colonising and anthropological gaze that one’s heart usually sinks when someone says that they are photographing “tribals”. I felt that here was someone who had overcome this by investing a lot of time and effort, together with an eye for detail and camera position, coming as he does from a background of art school and the commercial photography world of fashion and advertising. […]

‘Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh’ is at Whitechapel Gallery

Source: Sunil Gupta at Whitechapel: rewriting the history of photography – Telegraph
Address : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/7132473/Sunil-Gupta-at-Whitechapel-rewriting-the-history-of-photography.html
Date Visited: Fri Sep 26 2014 17:06:48 GMT+0200 (CEST)

Archana Mishra, Deccan Herald, Aug 13, 2014 | To read the full article, click here >>

He visited Bastar for the first time in 2002 for shooting an advertisement. Arrested by the beauty of the place, located in Chhattisgarh, Manoj Kumar Jain was more fascinated by his close encounter with the life of the locals and the tribals. […]

“We live in cities where everything is easily accessible but Bastar was a surprise to me,” says Jain taking a pause. “Barter system still exists there,” he continues in his heavy rustic voice as we look at his photographs on Bastar titled as ‘The Forgotten Frames’ and exhibited at India Habitat Centre. […]

Jain, who graduated in commercial art from College of Art, 1992, has clicked only portraits of the local and tribal community and all his photographs are in black and white. “Every face was interesting to me. Their attire, the way they look into camera and their interest in knowing about the life in a city was intriguing to me,” he says, directing towards the picture of a tribal woman clad in a white saree and standing adjacent to a tree. […]

“When somebody in the village has an unnatural death, a memory stone with wooden carvings is put up by the family. It has images of all kind of animals and birds like owl, fish and snake,” says Jain, who has also captured the changing trends in village. Like the fascination of young boys to wear sunglasses and branded T-shirt. “The simplicity of the community is getting lost somewhere as they are getting more close to the materialistic world,” he says.

Source: The artless beauty of tribal life and times
Address : http://www.deccanherald.com/content/425076/artless-beauty-tribal-life-times.html
Date Visited: Tue Sep 09 2014 21:05:02 GMT+0200 (CEST)

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