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Pablo is an old friend a reminder of the turmoils and the turbulence of my life caught in a vortex of confusion and alcoholic stupor, those days when our paths crossed, we never met after that and today when I got his invitation on Facebook I decided to reconnect with that chapter of my past, neither I nor Pablo knew that I too would be bound to the soul of a camera.
Pablo is a great photographer and his greatness lies in his humility photography is not just taking pictures but making you relive every moment that is a poetic journey of the photographers mind over the vast canvas of his passion angst pathos and the poetry and drama of his life painted in light.
Pablo is a master craftsman , a narrator who weaves the magic on your soul with what his minds eye caught for posterity.
In his words
Chronicles of a Past Life – Bombay
Intrinsic to my growing up, Bombay offered me and thousands of others like me who arrived before and those who followed as economic refugees the opportunity to be cradled and mentored professionally. It gave friendship, food and shelter and the chance to be discovered, the chance to become someone.
...
Having escaped bureaucratic Delhi, leaving behind my troubled teenage life, I found acceptance in this city not for whose son I was but for my skills and talents and of what use they could be to others. This propelled me to try to find myself both economically and in my work.
I look back with warmth and gratitude at what the city offered me. It was with a grudging reluctance that I left the city in the mid ’80s; the death of my father and trouble brewing in the north of the country beckoned me as I entered the world of journalism. Unfortunately, this marked the end of the documentary phase of my work as I started to work as a journalist and had to turn to colour, abandoning the world of black and white.
The “Chronicles” are connected to “Outside In: A Tale of 3 Cities,” my body of work that consisted of my inner world of friends and family. It roughly spans the same years—the ’70s and ’80s—but is more a manifestation of my outer world; my associations with the city and its people, known and unknown.
This exhibition is a way of paying my dues to this city and its people. Often I’d wander aimlessly through the streets in search of its many parts, bit by bit, day by day, month by month, always amazed by the infinite visual joy in each discovery of this place that came to be called home.
Pablo Bartholomew
New Delhi - 31 January 2011
And a bit about his exhibition on Mumbai Flashback
mumbaiboss.com/2011/02/21/mumbai-flashback/
Photographer Pablo Bartholomew came to Mumbai from Delhi, at the age of 21. Some take pictures of the Gateway or hope to catch a glimpse of film stars; Bartholomew photographed rag pickers, drug addicts, eunuchs and random pedestrians. With these photographs, he unwittingly put together a rich, melancholic portrait of Mumbai in the 1970s and early ’80s. Today, they are categorised as street photography and they have all the energy associated with the genre—but don’t see them as the work of a young photographer trying his hand at a new style. Instead, “Chronicles of a Past Life” is something of a photographic diary of the young Bartholomew getting to know this crazy city and its people.
Bartholomew has hung the show in a way that it mirrors the experience of approaching the city. First come more abstract images. Then come the cars, the cafes and the people. As you go further into the gallery, Bartholomew shows interiors of spaces like art galleries, the racecourse and the museum. He’s also got a table with a glass top. Under the glass is a cluster of candid shots of Smita Patil, Shobhaa De, Alyque Padamsee and other well-known faces. The most powerful photographs in “Chronicles of a Past Life” are in what Bartholomew calls “the subculture room”, which shows opium dens, eunuchs, street dwellers and Amitabh Bachchan on the sets of Kaalia. We talked to Bartholomew about the exhibition. To see the images from the show, view the slideshow above. Edited excerpts:
Roadside Photo Studio, Bombay
“1974 is when I first came and it was the first time I saw the sea. When I first came, I stayed around Kemps Corner with a Parsi friend. The inner room of the person and the outer were two different worlds. The moment you exited, there was just thriving life which was something which was not there in Delhi. Delhi was open suburbia, and [here in Mumbai] things were on top of each other. It was all very dense. In Delhi, we always had a sense of space, too much space and not enough people within that space. It was the opposite in Bombay. Everyone was rushing around and doing their own thing so you felt so much at peace, whereas in Delhi people are more curious, they look at you; there’s also a latent aggression. Bombay was a complete opposite and a freedom.”
Asiatic Library, Bombay
“I was always a south Bombay person. For me, this represented the city whether it was in the dock area or Fort or Colaba or Mazgaon or Girgaum or Mohammed Ali Road and its environs. [When hanging the show] I thought I’d start with the more obscure images because when you come into a city, you see a smattering of things. Then if you go in further, deeper, it’s cityscapes, landscapes, the sea which you can’t get away from in this island; then elements like the art gallery, the museum, the library, the party, the youth, the races.”
Man in a Racing Car, Bombay
“In the main hall, I thought I’d work with transportation because that’s a telling clue. How the shapes and sizes of the cars have all changed really shows the time and the city. Then there are the photographs showing rain, which is an integral part of how the city changes and becomes different. Then, of course, the restaurants, the cafes, the Irani shops, and the people in it. Unconsciously, I was drawn to photographing old people. Age has a way of changing body, clothing. There’s something very alluring about that.”
Film Extras During a Shooting Break, Bombay
“I came here, and one of the first employments I was able to get was to work on film sets as [a] stills photographer. It was a learning process with a lot of down time. For me, what was then more interesting within that was to go and look at all these people [the extras] and engage with them. Their lives, sad as they may have been, were far more interesting than the movie stars’. Movie stars were on pedestals, they came in for a few hours, and ran to another set and another shift. It used be the shift system with these guys shuffling around multiple sets. Then after two months, they’d show up to do pick-ups [follow-up shoots]. It was quite a haphazard and complicated way of shooting.”
Cold Drinks and Ice Cream Parlour, Bombay
“With my picture taking, it’s always that you look through and if that looks good, you press the button. You examined later. That was the magic of photography then. You had the film, you felt you had something, but there was an anxiety, a kind of vacuum. After you processed and contact sheet-ed, the excitement came about once again as you discovered things. Sometimes, there were very good accidents."
Eunuch and the Mirror, Bombay
“Everybody was fairly welcoming. This is a city that has advertising, showbiz, film, so the engagement of the people with the camera was quite casual. I hung around with people. That’s often a lot of photography: you have to hang around and win their trust before you can get in. And then there are other things that you just grab and shoot.”
Watchmaker, Bombay
“I think people were still struggling. There wasn’t enough wealth, not the degree of wealth that the city has now been able to accumulate. There was a different sort of sensibility, of people engaging, learning processes, engaging in intellectual thought, all of which maybe now has become too rock n’ roll. In the art scene specially, most things are more rock ’n’ roll than seriously considered. But then that’s my view, coming from a very Delhi point of view.”
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Tags: pablo bartholomew sakshi art gallery chronicles of a past life photo exhibition richard bartholomew
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Tags: pablo bartholomew sakshi art gallery chronicles of a past life photo exhibition richard bartholomew
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172,328 items / 1,343,012 views
Tags: pablo bartholomew sakshi art gallery chronicles of a past life photo exhibition richard bartholomew
© All Rights Reserved