Two exhibitions that followed each other at the Visual Arts Gallery of the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi are worth noting. The first was Kashmir Views (1934-1965), consisting of the photographs of Ram Chand Mehta, the youngest of the three brothers who founded the well-known photographic studio Mahattas in 1918 in Srinagar that later found a space in Rawalpindi, Nagin, Murree, Jammu and Gumarg, and in New Delhi after Partition. The second is a remarkable exhibition of oil on canvas mountainscapes by an army officer, K Jagjit Singh, entitled Indus to Gangotri. Both the photographer and the painter appear to have a lifelong affair with the Himalayas, but they share something deeper too.
The media they use are different. Clearly the camera highlights very different things from an artist capturing a landscape on canvas. That is why painting not only survived but also flourished after the invention of the camera. But there is something that both the good photograph and the good painting reflect that is common to both: the eye of the artist. And when I look at the work of photographer RC Mehta and of artist Jagjit Singh I find that both of them go beyond the limits of the medium in their finished products that gives them their originality.
The camera captures details, and indeed Mehta focusses on them. But if one looks at his panoramic view of the Dal Lake of 1937 or of a tree in water, one realises that the photographer harmonises the objects in an aesthetic structure that is in the artist?s mind. The perspective, angle, light, nuances and tones are those of the composer.
Jagjit Singh abstracts elements from a landscape and spreads them on canvas in some of his non-figurative works. But what separates his work from that of photographers of his ilk is the fact that he does not allow himself to be carried away. Rather he minimalises external details without letting go of those necessary to remind the viewer that he is looking at real mountains in real light with real textures. At the same time the artist has shorn the view of its unnecessary elements to highlight the aesthetic aspects that were foremost in the artist?s vision. Both the harmonisation of the photographer and the minimalisation of the artist bring the human intervention in art to the forefront, giving it a genuineness and depth.
Both these exhibitions were successful and the works were inexpensive. I tell collectors that Indian art (and photographs) are considerably under-priced. That is what makes them good investments. These photographs and paintings are below the Rs 2-lakh mark. The price of the canvases will double by next year, with the possibility of increasing to ten times their present price in five years.
The pricing of photographs is a more troublesome matter in the Indian market but from a global perspective one can expect collectors to make good gains by acquiring works of these artists, not to speak of the joy of possessing such works.
