Editorial
Clearly, photography has completed its ascent from a subaltern art form to high art, as is evident from the current predominance of photography and other lens-based aesthetic constructs at art shows worldwide. From its inception Jamini has accorded a special place to photography, and it’s only fitting that an issue should be devoted primarily to this vibrant and still youthful art form, with perceptive and eminently readable contributions by photographers and critics from home and abroad.
Shahidul Alam, who may be described as the linchpin of the photographic movement in the country, in the opening essay takes our Fine Arts establishment to task for not yet according photography the place it deserves, and in ‘The Digital Window’ pays a handsome tribute to the Malaysian Ismail Zain’s beguilingly innovative use of the new technology. Peter Nagy responds warmly to Sheba Chhachhi’s gallery of women ascetics in ‘Ganga’s daughters’. Ascetics feature also in Aasim Akhter’s ‘Face Value’, which focuses on Javed Kazi’s portraits of ‘fakirs and malangs’, alongside Asmat Kamal’s near-abstract experiments in the ‘physical negotiation of space’. Nilofur Farrukh’s ‘Validating the Recycled Image’ engagingly explores ways in which Pakistani artists have incorporated photography into their compositions. On a more speculative note Bas Vroege descants on ‘The Future of Photography’. Waqar Khan, our indomitable antiquarian of the still celluloid image, presents an impressive gallery of vintage photographs. Vintage photographs are also the subject of Suryanandini Sinha’s review of Lucknow: City of Illusion, a book of reproductions from the Ebrahim Alkazi collection.
As always, art forms other than the main theme of the issue haven’t been neglected. Ihab Hassan brings his redoubtable postmodern vision to bear on the dialectic between identity and displacement in his take on the Persian-Australian artist Hossein Valmanesh. Mahboob Alam, another of our dedicated antiquarians, offers a breezy view of the ‘pankha’ in colonial art. And to round off, a number of exhibitions at home and abroad have been covered. Fida Haq provides a freewheeling critique of the Sydney Biennale, and Nilufur Farrukh admires the ‘extraordinary textural sensitivity’ of the Bangladeshi Mahmudul Haque who showed recently at Karachi. Syed Manzoorul Islam lauds the versatility of Farida Zaman. M. Zaman guides the reader through five different shows: the Frenchman Bruno Ruff’s startling photographs of ‘Dhaka Upside Down’; the ancient art of Dhamrai metal casting; Ronni Ahmed’s latest surreal extravaganza; Rokeya Sultana’s attempts at transcendence through printmaking; and Laila Sharmin’s allusion-rich ‘Truth, Beauty and Me’, which showed prints and paintings alongside an installation; and Mahmud’s photographic exploration of Mro life.
Our next issue will be devoted primarily to sculpture. Before we round off we would like to share with our readers our profound sorrow at the demise of two of our cultural luminaries, the poet Shamsur Rahman and the painter Nitun Kunda. They have left this ‘vale of tears’ but their achievements will always be an inspiring presence in our lives.
Clearly, photography has completed its ascent from a subaltern art form to high art, as is evident from the current predominance of photography and other lens-based aesthetic constructs at art shows worldwide. From its inception Jamini has accorded a special place to photography, and it’s only fitting that an issue should be devoted primarily to…