SUNIL JANAH: CHRONICLING LIFE

The transformation of a photograph into an iconic image often takes place in retrospect. A photograph derives meaning as much from what is absent or left out as from what is present or captured within the frame. Choosing the ‘right’ moment in the continuum of time is perhaps what ultimately determines the fate of a photograph, as an iconic image that outlives its producers or one that is easily forgotten with time. This couldn’t be truer for documentary photography and photo journalism. In both cases, image taking depends entirely on the chosen moment, a choice exercised by the photographer. A photographer who exercised this choice par excellence was Sunil Janah.

Janah rose to prominence with his hard-hitting coverage of the 1943 Bengal famine. His images of the aftermath of a catastrophe that claimed millions in Bengal shocked the nation to its core. Born in Assam in 1918, Janah belonged to a middle class Kolkata (then Calcutta) family with familial ties to the Medinipur district of West Bengal. During his student days at the Presidency College, Calcutta, Janah dabbled in amateur photography and had every intention of becoming a journalist till he met P.C Joshi, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI). A member of the CPI’s student wing, Janah was already involved in left-wing politics when he was asked by P.C Joshi to document the Bengal famine. The politically charged atmosphere of the nation coupled with his personal left-leanings led to Janah’s quitting academics and following Joshi who intended to do reportage on the famine. It was on this journey that Janah came in contact with the artist Chittaprosad Bahattacharya who’s sketches of the hunger struck land were published alongside Janah’s photographs in the Indian Communist Party’s paper, People’s War and its sister concerns worldwide. Emaciated, skeleton-like family portraits, a dog chewing on a human corpse and skeletons scattered over the wasteland are some poignant images taken by Janah that have branded the famine as the worst man-made calamity in our collective memory.

Although his work was recognized internationally for its brand of uncompromised narration, it was not without personal guilt for Janah. In an interview with Frontline’s V.K Ramachandran, Janah expressed his distress at not being able to help the victims of the famine actively. Admitting it to be a harrowing experience, Janah also felt that he “had to take photographs”. It was perhaps this belief and his steel determination that kept Janah going, leading to the creation of an exhaustive recording of the disaster. Although Janah viewed himself as an intruder, his photographs never betrayed a sense of invasion of his subject’s privacy. More often than not, the genre of photojournalism does not afford the photographer the convenience of time to compose shots that are ethically as well as aesthetically balanced. In the case of Janah’s images, be it of riot victims, national leaders, famous dancers or tribal women, Janah always did justice to the individual’s subjectivity as well as to the aesthetics of the image.

After his documentation of the Bengal famine, Janah became a permanent member of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and moved to their headquarters in Bombay. He became the official photographer of CPI and travelled the length and breadth of the country documenting the changing socio-political landscape of an evolving nation. In 1945, P.C Joshi teamed Janah with Life magazine’s photographer Margaret Bourke-White. Together they travelled to the south of India to cover the famine that has spread there. Janah’s ideals of socialism reflect across his oeuvre. Even when he was photographing wars, leaders, riots and rallies, Janah simultaneously documented the struggles of the common man. His images of coal miners from Bihar, tea-pickers of Darjeeling and farmers protesting in Telangana are a testimony to his commitment to the CPI’s ethos of being the common man’s voice. Janah’s acute awareness of the nuances of the medium set him apart from his contemporaries. Most of his pictures were taken from below the eye level, imparting an aura of heroism to the subject that was reminiscent of the socialist realism era art in Russia. Although the point of view was dictated by the Rolleiflex camera that needed to be held at waist-level, the precise and tight compositions were dictated by Janah’s own sense of aesthetics. A masterful control of natural light rendered his subjects with a sharpness that Janah strived for in his images.

After the removal of P.C Joshi as the general secretary of CPI in 1948, Janah’s Connections to the party became strained. He shifted to Kolkata (then Calcutta) where he opened a Photo studio and continued working as a commercial photographer. An observation of the images taken during this phase indicates its contrast to the earlier, pre-independence phase in the context of the subject depicted. Janah concentrated on photographing architectural edifices and classical Indian forms. Consequently, he is credited with documenting some pivotal artists like, Ragini Devi, Indrani Rehman, Shanta Rao and Bade Ghulam Ali Sahab.

Janah’s technical prowess of the craft and his passion to document India and its people can be observed in the book, The Tribals of India. For this book, Janah collaborated with anthropologist Verrier Elwin and together they created a visual history of the country’s indigenous folks. There is a sense of ease in the images. The subjects - Mahasu youth, Bhil girls, and topless Kerala women – all appear to be unselfconscious and utterly oblivious to the camera’s eye. Janah’s portrayal of his subjects is devoid of romanticism, depicting them going about their daily chores in their natural habitat. Smiling, laughing and gazing back at the camera, these men and women break away from the mold of the “exotic”. The Tribals of India was Janah’s third book. Janah’s first book titled, The second creature was published by Signet Press, Calcutta in 1948.His second book, Dances of the Golden Hall, co-authored with Ashoke Chatterjee is a collection of photographs of the Indian classical dancer Shanta Rao and her interpretation of the traditional Indian dances.

Photographer Ram Rehman organized a retrospective of Janah’s work in New York in 1998 that featured 600 vintage prints. Rehman describes Janah as a political activist whose activism was his photography. Even after a lifetime of taking photographs, with diminishing eyesight and failing health, Janah’s passion for his craft and his belief in socialism remained intact. In an interview with Silicon Valley based ‘internet radio’ producer Kamala Bhatt, Sunil Janah’s son, Arjun has been noted to say that although his father never went back to the communist party he believed in the goals and ideals of socialism till his dying day.

By Shabari Choudhury

This article appeared in the 75th Issue of the Magazine Art & Deal

Legacy Extraordinaire

       His was a quiet revolution. At a time when the ‘progressives’ of India’s art world were clamouring to claim a language of their own, the contained, silent voice of Tyeb Mehta splintered the canvas of modern Indian art, much like the diagonals in his paintings. Born in Kapadvanj, Gujarat in 1925, into a family whose business was making films, Tyeb Mehta worked as an editor for three years prior to enrolling at the Sir J. J School of Art in Mumbai (then Bombay) in 1947. 
       
      Art came to him by chance when he enrolled at the art school with hopes of becoming an art director. Studying along with contemporaries like Francis Newton Souza, the founding member of the Progressive Group of artists (popularly known as PAG) and Maqbool Fida Hussain, Tyeb Mehta was drawn into a whole new world of colour, form and line. The members of the Progressive Group of artists were the first postcolonial generation of artists in India who actively sought to move away from the western academic model of classicism that was being taught at art colleges as well as the revivalist wave that had appeared with the freedom movement in the country. As a second generation member of the group, any mention of PAG is usually not without the mention of Tyeb Mehta; especially with context to the presence of Modern Indian Masters in the global art Scenario. Although Tyeb Mehta is considered as the harbinger of change for Modern Indian Art; especially post the sale of his triptych Celebration at the 2002 Christie’s auction, the mantle could not have rested with a more reluctant hero. Unconcerned with his rising status or the money that his name could fetch, the artist never catered to market demands or boom periods. He created artworks at his own pace; a testimony to the artist’s exacting standards. Ever since the beginning, Tyeb Mehta was his own harshest critic. He often created and destroyed many complete works before he was satisfied with the output. This process of self censure did not stem from the need to pander to market requirements, but perhaps had more to do with the artist’s lifelong process of learning the craft of image making.
       
      Art historians and critics, who knew Tyeb Mehta will vouch for the artist’s less-is-more approach to life. One can see this approach; of simplicity and starkness, percolating into his artistic practice as well. Tyeb Mehta’s search for a single image, a metaphor to express his experiences of The 1947 Tyeb Mehta, Mahishasura,This poignant image, of a powerful beast being tied up in a state of helplessness, was according to the artist; the ultimate loss of vitality, humanities failure to channelize its energies. This image remained with him till much later, manifesting in stylistically significant later works like the Mahishasura series, especially the Mahishasura, 1996.Often tagged as the ‘Indian [Francis] Bacon’ and compared to Henri Matisse for his technique of colour usage, Tyeb Mehta’s artistic oeuvre speaks a language of its own. Unlike the palpable trauma present in Francis Bacon’s works like the Figure with meat or his other meat paintings that embody the crudity of the act of butchering, Tyeb Mehta’s figures are suffused with a sense of pathos and empathic grief. Undoubtedly, his visits aboard, the first to London and Paris in 1954, the second to London from 1959 to 1964 and the third to New York on a Rockefeller fellowship had significant influence on his method of creation. While studying western masters abroad, Tyeb Mehta witnessed a burgeoning art scenario that permeated his personal visual language with a newness and boldness of form and colour, one that came to be recognized as his mark. The broken, fractured forms, human as well as animal, are often seen arrested in mid-motion, waiting to complete an action whose end seems elusive. This suspended animation that pervades much of Tyeb Mehta’s later works can be presumably linked to his exposure to films from an early age. Captured as moments in time, the austere figures of rickshawallas, falling men and the demon Mahishasura locked in battle with the goddess; to an extent, reflect the stylistic adaptation of the medium of film. 

     When viewing paintings from Tyeb Mehta’s Diagonal series (1969–76), it is impossible not to draw a parallel between the collective trauma of the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition and the chasm-like mark drawn by the artist on the canvas. The diagonal stroke, running from one corner to the other of the canvas, was incorporated by the artist as a compositional tool. A dynamic element, the diagonal effectively broke the picture plane, further distorting the already fractured forms. This division of form along with the flat application of pure colours compounds the misery of these forms whose shrieks seem to be frozen mid-air. During his artist residency at the Vishwa Bharati University, Santiniketan in 1983, Tyeb Mehta produced a 4.5 meter long triptych titled the Santiniketan Triptych (1984). The painting depicts the Santhal community’s Charak festival where the overall atmosphere seems to be that of festivity and bonhomie. The diagonal element is conspicuously absent with more figures used by the artist for a composition than ever before. 

      A loner by choice, Tyeb Mehta needed isolation to create his art. He lived his life in a suburban Mumbai apartment and in his studio; with his wife Sakina and son Yusuf. Never the one to use art as means of garnering fame and popularity, Tyeb Mehta’s way of life remained untouched by his rising public persona even post the landmark Christie’s auction of 2002. Although reclusive by nature, Tyeb Mehta was mentor to a whole generation of young Indian artists in the 1990’s and delighted in any benefit that they received owing to his status in the international market.Succumbing to a long battle with failing health, Tyeb Mehta passed away in 2009. He leaves behind a legacy of artistic distinction, of a life which at times was adverse and at times was painful but one that he lived on his own terms. In his pursuit of a simple life, Tyeb Mehta has left behind a legacy that is extraordinary. 

By Shabari Choudhury 

This article appeared in the 75th  issue of Art & Deal Magazine.