“My real education began when the celebrated photographer S. Paul took me under his wings,” says Madhavi Swarup, who had, in fact bagged the best student award for photography at NIFT, Delhi. At 46, Swarup still talks about her mentor with a respectful hush in her voice and it was no surprise that she asked the veteran lensman to inaugurate her latest show of black and white photographs titled Duality at Visual Arts Gallery in New Delhi in early September.
Having started her professional tryst with the camera later than is common – her first solo show titled ‘Corridors of Black and White Images’ capturing Delhi’s architectural splendour in 2003 was an instant hit – Swarup has never had to look back ever since. Several successful art outings later, all in her favourite black and white, Swarup’s latest show of 24 life-size photographs was replete with images that defy conventional landscape photography and are far more evocative because of their minimal and abstract nature, yet retaining the same impact as her debut work.
Swarup grew up in Gorakhpur in an environment resonating with music, literature and a traditional way of life – her father is a writer and poet and mother a classical singer – and even as the youngest of her siblings, she was quick to follow in her father’s footsteps who was also a hobby photographer. “My first camera, a Click III, was gifted to me my by father when I was ten,” she says, “I used to be fascinated by his studio, the flash of the bulbs, the equipments even as a child.”
Though she married young, Swarup’s pursued her affair with the camera as a hobby but it was her inherent talent that makes her work extremely spontaneous. “I do not stress on the construct of photography as history or memory. In the photographs, the attention is on their graphic quality.”
In ‘Duality’ for instance, Swarup chose to juxtapose one image that is predominantly black with one that is serenely white in form and texture. “This is the duality of our lives. While white is a metaphor of upliftment of the consciousness, the outer side and even heaven as we know it, black stands for our very physical being, the earth. Putting two together one can create an emotion of universality amongst all.”
The photographs shown in ‘Duality’ have been clicked during her various travels and journeys over the last two years – to Rajasthan, Greece, London, Vatican City, Agra and even in Delhi. “Though no work tells us where it has been taken, there is a common thread that binds all of them. It tells us there are no obvious divides amongst us…we are all common in the way our lives unfold.”
Swarup’s photographs exhibit beautiful textures, play of light and shade, space and time, capturing just the right mood in her unusual panoramic angles (the largest work in the show was a 44 inches by 66 inches work with a shiv-linga like form in white), producing images that caress the eye.
Image Courtesy: Madhavi Swarup.
