Looking Outward                                                                                                                                                                                          Feb 18/Feb 19



How do you see? What do you show?

In the last week (and much beyond that), I have been having a lot of conversations on observation and representation, and their roles in storytelling.


As she starts off “America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly,” Sontag says, “One great poet alone cannot change the moral weather; even when the poet has millions of red guards at his disposal...” and here she is with Mao.  
1. Earlier in the month, as I skipped, pleasantly and ever so interestedly, from “In Plato’s Cave” to “America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly” to “Melancholy Objects,” photography as a practice came into question in a way I had not imagined it to— despite my knowing, in fact, that even a slight brush with Sontag would draw me closer to critical nirvana. For some time now, I have been keen to polemicize (or, at least, digest) the dual role of Camera as apparatus and proxy audience. But, photography itself has remained mainly an activity of pleasure, save awareness of framing and gaze. I, as photographer of amateur stature and power, was entirely under the light of question upon reading even just these initial few chapters of Sontag On Photography. And, as I flipped each page, the act of photographing itself fell under that scrutiny in my eyes. 

My question, and the position of my scrutiny, was (and continues to be) of intention and intentionality. Do I point my camera, when pointed at strangers, external surroundings, and worlds outside myself, like I am taking a photograph? Does my surrounding know it is being photographed? The answer to these questions is instant and the answer is no; I shoot with fear, cowardice, and celerity. If I were to— while sitting at a roadside tea shop, next to a helmet and his man— spot the buses going by perfectly running behind a parked auto, with a slew of trees giving background to the scene, I would 
                                                                            a. question to take my camera out. Would this be too odd to do?
                                                                           b. finally deciding to take the camera out, I would turn the flash 
                                                                                 off— I needn’t cause more alarm than I have already
                                                                            c. then, at last, two quick photographs will be taken: one entirely
                                                                                 shaky, the other, more something. 
                                               
Now, is this what Diane Arbus would do?
Diane Arbus would shine the flash in her subject’s face, all while they were posing, and produced an immaculate print. Now there is job done with not just intention but intentionality. 

I cannot recall if I got the shot I wanted.

Arrêt de Tramway Diane Arbus, from where I used to make my way to the Metro.  


Xmas tree in a living room in Levittown, Long Island, 1963.


Lady in a rooming house parlor, Albion, N.Y., 1964

Whatever came of the cowardly photograph I took.

It is in unconfident secret that I often photograph. This was the conversation I had with myself.

2. In what really feels like chance encounter, I recently happened to buy Girish Karnad’s collection of early-year memoirs, This Life at Play. Though with some skepticism, I have revered him from the moment of his death. In my mother’s repeating practice of showing devotion and remembrance to the recently deceased, she spent, as usual, a day dedicated to reflecting on his life and cultural productions sometime in June of 2019. One amongst the artefacts of her attention was a short documentary on his life commisioned by the Sahitya Akademi three years before his death. Now closing eight years, I remain grateful she reeled me in to join her in watching it. The story of his life, especially when consumed so concisely in under 30 minutes, indelibly embedded itself in me at the age of 16.

Fresh from having watched and loved Shyam Benegal’s Bhumika about a week before, Karnad’s book was the first I spotted one afternoon right as I entered a bookstore. I read it then each morning, and my reader’s analysis was such: Karnad is a great storyteller, but not so much a writer, for his vignettes were unmatchably beautiful when compared to how he wove his stories in this book. Particularly while reading his Sirsi chapter, which was endlessly fascinating, set in a time we no longer have material reference to, I felt myself within his world. I could see a young Girish and his sister Leena run amok about rural Malnad however I could not say the same for their companions entitled “the compounder’s children.” While I could, and did, prejudicially imagine what two compounder’s children could look like, they remained nameless and largely undescribed for the length of the story, referred to solely by this given nom de guerre. In contrast, most other camarades of Karnad received each their own paragraph, if not more of them. The questions: was this because these were insignificant characters? were they so entirely insignificant to Karnad’s character development and, by association, uninteresting? was there nothing to say about them, other than the fact of their companionship? was this a subtle manifestation of Karnad’s brahminism and its simple preponderance, especially in that part of his life? Whatever the reason, partial representation felt disrespectful. Here was a book of over 300 pages, a memorial of every person, place, thing and element in four decades of his life, a chance to eulogize this world for the rest of eternity, and the characters of these two children will be forgotten inside a nondescript box entitled “the compounder’s children.” An inadequate method of showing that I found myself warned against.  

Karnad though, as seen in his oeuvre, did grasp society in a manner that was both accute and insightful, as did his peers of the parallel cinema movement and the post-Bal Gandharva theater generation. I could see in his understanding of his mother’s life and other social realities of his surroundings, how he shaped characters like Smita Patil’s Usha, or the number of intricately designed characters who were far from being him.

                    Karnad and Patil, as man and wife, in Jabbar Patel’s Umbartha

Though surely Usha was drawn, for the most part, from Hansa Wadkar’s reality, it is still is a feat to write someone’s story so closely and seemingly perfectly, as if Karnad, Benegal, and dialogue writer Satyadev Dubey formally trained in the female condition. While reading Karnad’s first chapter, “Prak: Prelude,” on his mother’s life leading up to his birth until her death, what became evident was that especially through her, he had intimately observed and understood the female condition; as close as a training as he could have gotten on that. Though it was only when she was 82 and she wrote a thirty-odd page biography of her life in an old diary of her husband’s did Girish and his siblings truly understood their mother’s life and mind sans any lingering questions, with his eyes and ears he has always been aware of her personal complexity. While I read his book, and thought of Usha, I also thought of all the other stories he has written throughout his prolific career. In “Sirsi,” he credits his time in the town for his larger-than-life imagination and the expanse of his dramaturgy. I see that entirely.

I was fascinated and thought for long: how can he write so well of lives he has not lived? Not only that, I was jealous of how he could do that. This was the conversation I had with friends. We each presented our theories of hows and whys.  



Bergman and Ullmann on the set of Autumn Sonata (2)

From Bhumika, naturally, my mind gravitated to the venerable Bergman and his hold over the vulnerable, especially through the vessel of Liv Ullmann (and, often, Bibi Andersson).
While watching whether Autumn Sonata or Cries and Whispers, amongst the rest of his filmography, I felt I had been opened bare and peeked at by this dead, eccentric 20th century Swedish man.
How does he do it?

Watch: Liv Ullmann on Autumn Sonata
Ullman, here, speaks of the suspension of disbelief involved in the process of making this film by her and Ingrid Bergman, as actors, women, and mothers.

Certainly there is comparatively higher agentic power possesed by an actor playing a created character, as opposed to the subject of a photograph who must just be themselves as they are being shot at. Though to not much avail, Ingrid Bergman could protest in staunch opposition to the extent of absenteesim of a prodigal mother written by absentee prodigal father; even if not entirely successful, this process involves some extent of so called creative collaboration, for ultimately it is the actor who portrays the character. Ultimately, my viewer’s analysis, despite [Ingrid] Bergman’s legitimate concerns for truthfulness, was that I never once blinked at the story he was selling. It was no doubt that, accurate or not, he knew how to show the female condition. And he knew how to do so and elicit the response of felt reciprocation.  

This is where my questions find a coinciding answer. Representation of external fascinations come from bold but incisive invasion of people and spaces that are not you, and perhaps if the work is good enough, your transgressions are forgiven. The intrusion of that event can never be ignored, neither the imbalance of power. But, in all its intrusion, seeing and showing can only exist respectfully with the intention and spirit of collaboration of subject and seer.

Whether truthful or not, whether moral or amoral, whether invasive, spectatorial, or, of simple fascination, intention and a lens of respect stimulates mere audacity in the production of a moving piece of art, for it is audacious to attempt to represent the other. This perhaps is how all great artists have always worked. This perhaps is the root to great artistry. It comes from the same flash-camera apparent intrusion as the working of Arbus. By plain, nonangular, respectful acknowledgement of the Other, the Other is nothing more than just that: the other, someone outside of you.