RAKESH BEDI
This is an artificial world; there's no truth here - Kannadiveedu, Kakanadan
When Gandhi was fighting repression in South Africa and trying to improve the stifled lives of multitude of penurious Indians, Aurobindo Ghosh, incensed by the partition of Bengal, was stirring nationalistic fervour in India. Both men, three years apart in age, followed different trajectories in their middle age.
Gandhi came back to India and became the Spartan-yet-shrewd mascot of nationalism, and Aurobindo, after a series of mystical visions, repaired to Pondicherry and took to spiritualism. Like Gandhi the politician, who was given the holy prefix of Mahatma, Aurobindo the spiritual seeker added a more austere Sri to his first name and, with his collaborator and spiritual associate Mirra Alfassa (The Mother), went on writing philosophical treatises and drawing resolute followers the world over.
By the time he was assassinated in 1948, Gandhi was a widely photographed man, his gaunt visage making fat the portfolios of world-famous photos such as Margaret Bourke-White. But the sombre photos of Gandhi's death that travelled around the world were taken by 39-year-old French man Henri http://www.nalumar.com/cartier-calibre-de-cartier-replica-uk.html-Bresson, making him and his agency Magnum, which he had founded with Robert Capa and a few others in 1947, famous.
Through a Leica, Starkly
There's one crepuscular moment of a visibly shocked Nehru astride the Birla House gate announcing the Mahatma's death, captured blurrily by Cartier Tank Replica-Bresson's Leica. The iconic photograph's half-lit funereal gloom flashed around the world India's sudden plunge into darkness and its acute loss of losing its most beloved leader. Taken hurriedly without a flash, for HCB never used one, the photo is still a poignant reminder of India's fragility and its new, precarious independence.
Two years after Gandhi's passing, in 1950, Cartier Pasha Replica-Bresson went with his German camera to the French-influenced Pondicherry and took shots of Aurobindo and the Mother. Aurobindo died in December of that year, and HCB's shots of him, rarely seen until now, with his spiritual ally are tight and closely framed, and as signifiers carry an oppressive feeling of foreboding of the master's coming death.
There are also energetic photographs of the Mother playing tennis, and in these mid-shots Aurobindo's associate is almost alone, hardly missing the company of her long-term collaborator. Seen together, the cramped shots of both of them sitting close, and then of the mother playing tennis, the photographs convey a sense of abrupt, bizarre but not rueful loss.
Cartier-Bresson had to persuade Mother, who the inmates of the ashram said was "the manifested aspect of divinity", hard to make Aurobindo sit for these photographs, and that's why these fastidious portraits have the quality of sternness and austerity written all about them. The rigidity of the philosopher gives these photos an un-Bressonian feel.
"The old man did not wink an eye for the 10 minutes I was watching him. He did not seem to belong to that impersonal setting, yet he was entrenched in his chair," writes Cartier-Bresson, making his exasperation clear.
Capturing a Private Man
His slight displeasure shows clearly when he comments acerbically on Aurobindo's room, which is almost as austere and rigorous and grim as the man. "The inevitable tiger skin," lying taut on the philosopher's bed, "which seems the companion of those aiming at spiritual achievement," says HCB. An orientalist jibe that can be ascribed to Cartier-Bresson's ignorance or plain annoyance at not being able to make Aurobindo acquiesce to reducing his intense severity for the benefit of HCB's Leica.
The shot of both of them together again reflects Aurobindo's discomfiture at being photographed. He was a deeply private man, and for HCB to manage an entry into the ashram at Pondicherry and somehow being able to take his portraits was a remarkable coup. But for Aurobindo, who put in an appearance for his disciples only four times a year, it was an invasion of his fiercely guarded solitude. "He sits immovable for hours, in a tabernacle with silk ornament," says Cartier-Bresson acidly on Aurobindo's darshan, a remark in its peppy flippancy completely ignorant of the philosopher's profound need for seclusion.
Cartier-Bresson's photos of the Mother, part of the Alkazi collection and recently mounted in the Capital, are more open, their quick compositions reflecting the woman's serenity and big-hearted receptivity. The Mother is shown, in photo after photo, receiving disciples, inspecting physical exercises and gently doing other mundane tasks required to run an ashram.
She, unlike Aurobindo, seems to be enjoying the hubbub. But most of these hastily shot photos would be better placed in a short Sebaldian narrative to evoke the memories and uniqueness of a place, their brisk histories together speaking calmly of a geography erased by time, but kept solidly intact by these black-and-white documents.
Ashram Photography
Mother, whom Cartier-Bresson calls a "byzantine empress" while clicking her together with Aurobindo during a darshan, bought the entire portfolio from the famous photographer, and he would have readily given the photos away, for the pictures have nothing in them that denote the famous timelessness and artistry of Cartier-Bresson. Another story says Magnum was strapped and needed the money badly.
Perhaps encumbered by the confines of the ashram, HCB's visual narratives are entirely different from what is now considered his storied and widely seen India portfolio. They lack the classicism and immediacy of his other Indian photos, and their visual aesthetic is akin to something loosely defined as Ashram Photography, the many examples of which by other lesser photographers form part of the exhibit.
"The moral backbone of literature," says WG Sebald, "is about that whole question of memory. To my mind it seems clear that those who have no memory have the much greater chance to lead happy lives." Photographs are living documents of memory, sorrowful or salutary. In them, past is a solid sacrament and its obliteration impossible as long as the photos exist.
Pondicherry's past, with its French and Portuguese and other influences, is narrated through the photos of Cartier-Bresson and others, and it comes alive nicely through these visual signposts, but individually these photographs, including Cartier-Bresson's, fail to excite.
Cartier-Bresson is truth. But within the bounds of the ashram even he feels circumscribed, and a bit artificial; his style cramped and his truth restricted.
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