New Delhi, Aug 21 (Inditop.com) Noted photographer Prabir Purkayastha has taken a break from his signature photo-essays on Ladakh, this time depicting a love triangle between Adam, Eve and Lucifer through snapshots of nature in Southeast Asia and Assam in India.
The show, “Return to Eden”, comprising more than 50 photographs in colour and black-and-white, has opened at the Art Alive Gallery as part of the inaugural cache of the India Art Summit during Aug 19-22.
The photographs have been culled from his recent trips to the rain forests and ruins of ancient Hindu temples in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand and to the riverine bird sanctuaries in Assam.
“I have used nature and its populace as metaphors for the story of Eden – to portray the Biblical fall of Paradise. It is also the tale of life. For me, Eden is a love triangle between three characters – Adam, Eve and Lucifer,” Purkayastha said.
Photography, feels Purkayastha, who has risked his life shooting in the jungles of Southeast Asia, is yet to come of age in India.
“It will take quite a while before photography becomes mainstream art. It is a sum total of many factors. People are yet to identify with photography as art. Galleries, museums and international art fairs have to take the lead in promoting photography,” the 56-year-old photographer said.
The exhibits, divided into three segments – “Creation”, “Flight” and “Temptation”, represent photographer Purkayastha and curator Ina Puri’s vision of Eden.
“I selected the exhibits from over 1,000 photographs. Prabir is known for his photographs of Ladakh, but I wanted him to break out of his Ladakh mould and interpret nature through his camera across Asia,” Puri told Inditop.
The sequence, which begins with coloured frames of dense forests, wilderness, seas lashing against rocks, full rivers in monsoon, green meadows on an overcast day and gushing streams, echoes with a riot of colours.
Close shots of exotic flowers, leaves, trees and water bodies enhance the clarity of colours and capture every fold and turn of the petals, leaves, twigs, stones and rippling streams that carpet the exotic tropical forests of Southeast Asia.
“Creation is all about colours when nature is untouched. It is a story that begins with joy but gradually turns black,” Delhi-based Purkayastha, a former advertising honcho, told Inditop.
Colourful nature is Purkayastha’s Eden, where Adam and Eve appear as the stone sculptures of man and woman on the walls of the Angkor Vat temple in Cambodia, in the rugged cliff heads of Vietnam and as the long-legged birds frolicking in a swollen Brahmaputra river in Assam.
The love story in Purkayastha’s exhibition evolves in the two black and white sections – “Flight” and “Temptation”, where the subjects are sharply etched in white against grey and black backgrounds.
“Adam is a giant hornbill with a mean beak and Eve is a dancing white crane. At the end of the divine love that they share, Adam flies out towards the sun as their passion sullies and Eve gives in to the tempting charms of Lucifer – the prince of darkness. She deserts the nest.
“It symbolises the woman, the traditional homemaker, who leaves home to seek the pleasures of the night outside. Genesis, as a story, does not have a happy ending, for the creations of god have vanished,” Purkayastha explained.
Lucifer is depicted in the dark expanses of night that canopy the shimmering subjects and in the ghostly head shots of the sculpted demon king – Ravana – found in the ruins of the Angkor Vat temple.
Purkayastha, who has been shooting Ladakh for the last 15 years, was honoured with the Habitat Award for Best Photography in 2002 and his coffee table book, “Ladakh” won several prizes in India and Britain.
Lensmen across the globe celebrated World Photography Day Wednesday.
