KOLKATA: Art lovers and visitors from all walks of life are thronging the Kolkata International Photo Festival (KIPF 2019) in the metropolis and mystic mountains and its myriad tribals have become their special charm.
Uma Nair, India’s top curator and art critic from New Delhi, has included photographer Shyamal Datta from Shillong in the week-long festival that began on Friday.
Datta, whose pictures drew a huge crowd in New Delhi earlier, has worked on photographic documentation on the diversity of the North East.
His work, spanning over a decade, is both amongst tribal communities and its fauna.
Datta’s suite of 15 works has been titled as “North-East Vignettes” and is being shown at the Bengal Gallery at the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) in Kolkata.
Nair believes that the North East cameo is one that holds hidden truths and the elegance of ethnicity in India.
She has chosen images which echo folklore, wildlife habitat and everyday idioms in living.
“The images are imbued with a profound sense of foreboding; timelessness and are grainy which are sometimes inscrutable, as they represent the tangled and twisted histories of hardship set against a monotone sky,” she said.
“This is the subject of some of the indigenous tribes of the North East who are still primordial in the harder instincts of livelihood,” she added.
The festival kicked off on February 28 to reveal some of the world’s iconic repertoires.
Repertoires of the world’s greatest masters include many of which have never been shown before.
The festival has all the masters such as Raghu Rai, S Paul, Jyoti Bhatt and the doyen, Satyajit Ray, whose photographs have been lent by his son Sandip Ray.
Talking about this iconic image, Datta said in all his finery, “The Naga looks like a weathered sage as he sits in his home. He is one of the last remaining Angami Naga tribal elders practising the indigenous faith system and he proudly displayed his dress and ornaments.”
“These are images of the old, with voices sad and prophetic, content to live in their essence of simplicity, dignity and humility. There are also one or two rugged portraits,” he added.