#FaunaOfMirrors: I Love Cinema

By Amshu Chukki (IND)

Shot on deserted film sets of Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad, this work takes us on a tour of a city that is both ancient and futuristic. With time suspended on its surface and left in limbo, the sites we see are like allegories to the future of our ancestors.

With its constructed hospitals, hotels, and neighbourhoods, the Film City resembles a deserted post-apocalyptic city whose inhabitants have disappeared. The tour bus, loaded with visitors, navigates this seeming abandonment of this city, and the guide re-imagines Film City’s desertion and narrates fiction that originates from this site. Read more

By Balaji Maheshwar (IND)

"Religion is the opium of the masses and sigh of the oppressed", says Karl Marx. In Tamil Nadu, Cinema is a religion. 

Tamil Nadu has a close link between its politics and its cinema. Cinema has always remained a propaganda tool here.

In this project, 'First-Day-First-Show', Balaji tries to understand how the idea of masculinity is propagated through cinema in the form of heroism and how fans revere their on-screen idols. He has experienced First-Day-First-Show as a cinema fanatic and not as a photographer. Read more  

By Cop Shiva (IND)

This series is a result of the photographer’s interactions with Vidyasagar – a Bangalore resident who would dress up every day as M G. Ramachandran, the politician and a Tamil film icon who cast an overpowering influence on the politics. 

The manipulation of identity through disguise and the idea of taking on a new persona is, in many ways, a comment on the prevalent influence of cinema in the socio-cultural context of South India. The artist captures the dichotomy of a split personality and duality by photographing a man who spent his life masquerading as someone other than his true self. The series delves into polarized ideas of reality and fantasy. Read more 

By Dayanita Singh (IND)

‘Master Jee’ is a collaboration with choreographer Mark Morris. These images of Saroj Khan, the legendary Bollywood dance choreographer, were made in the early 90s. The images were so sumptuous, Dayanita was never sure what form they should take.

When Mark Morris was curating the White Light Festival in 2016, he asked for a work to go into the exhibition. That is when Dayanita sent him all the images of Saroj Khan, and asked him to pace and sequence them to the music of his choosing. Read more 

By Late Jethalal H. Thakker

He came to India as a refugee during the India-Pakistan partition. He moved to Bombay and set up the India Photo Studio in Dadar next to Chitra Cinema. He soon became known for his moody portraits and developed a signature style of dramatic lighting with spotlights, shadow textured backgrounds and studio props and costumes.

Many of Thakker’s photographs became iconic images which defined Indian Bollywood actors like Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar, Nargis, Meena Kumari, Nutan, Ashok Kumar and Pran. Read more

By Karthik Subramanian (IND)

This work studies the representation of Tamil political leader, Jayalalitha or popularly addressed as ‘Amma’ (mother), whose emergence in the political scene is tightly intertwined with the history of Cinema and Popular Media in the state. Kartik intends to reconstructs the political history of Jayalalitha and her mentor & precursor M.G Ramachandran, both of whom used films and media to capture and construct their public persona.

His photography springs out of the constant doubt that questions our visual experience to be real or unreal. Kartik, uses his photography to build the bridge between these two states of perceptions. Read more

Jason Shulman (UK)

This is a series of photographs that capture the entire duration of a movie in a single exposure. The artist is a sculptor whose work extends into photography, film, and painting. Analgesia, loss, and the delusions inherent in perception are some of his areas of enquiry.

Analgesia, loss, and the delusions inherent in perception are some of his areas of enquiry. He often combines scientific experimentation with more formal artistic trajectories, using optics and other basic science to expose the falsehoods that underpin our experience of reality.  Read more