Hello Friends,
You are cordially invited to my first solo exhibition of fine art photographs, "Reminiscing from the Folds of Memory", Karnataka Chitrakala Parishat(next to hotel Lalit Ashok), Bangalore, from February 16th to 19th.
The exhibition will showcase some of my favorite fine art photography work I have done in recent years and also a collection of images I have made over last few years, in various parts of rural India.
As the urban life is getting more and more hi-tech, fast paced and excessive, villages still seem to provide a glimpse of the simpler times. Even though Indian villages may not be exactly what they were a couple of decades ago, but the chasm between urban and rural is still the same, or may be even more. The scarcity in villages suddenly gives a perspective to our lives of over abundance in cities. I also find it extremely fascinating, that although lives in cities are moving in fast forward, villages in India still give a chance to witness many activities which have been carried out in the same fashion as they were thousands of years before, as if they are a link between me and my distant ancestors. They still nurture the close relationship between nature and humans where nature is at a larger scale, unlike in cities where it has been dwarfed by human activities and structures.
In these images I have tried to capture the austere beauty of rural India. It is an attempt to bring back the fleeting memories of subtle joys like the gentle breeze over the fields, the quiet afternoons with the grinding mills' chimney making constant "hup-hup" sound and occasional calls by peacocks, the tinkling bells of cows and goats at dusk, or the clear cool night skies. It is an attempt to focus on beauty, order and grace in places that are written off as poverty stricken, dirty and mundane. These images coming from countryside to our lives in cities, create a sort of juxtaposition in mind, of minimal against extravagance, pause against pace, grace in scarcity against hideous in snazzy. I hope my images bring some degree of calmness and joy from that other world, to those who never have had any exposure to rural life, or to those who remember it with nostalgia.
The images in this series have been made in villages of MP, Rajasthan, Punjab, Tamilnadu, Kashmir and Karnataka, over a period of last 4 years.
Please make some time during those 4 days of exhibition and visit the show, please bring your friends and family along too. Your encouragement is sincerely appreciated. :)
cheers!!
rachna
