Monday, September 1, 2014

Women in Metro: Photographs of Manoj Bharti Gupta

(Photograph by Manoj Bharti Gupta)

Inside the metro rail compartments, people hardly get time to act. They are in their vulnerable best. Before they enter the metro coaches, while waiting for the trains to come they are almost like trained animals who are ready to obey the whiplashes of the trainer. Once they are about to get in, they all lose their control and their primordial animal nature comes out in full play. Those who want to get in do not mind to squeeze the ones who are elbowing their best to get out. Trained by daily practice, many know how to get in and how to get out without getting hurt or without hurting others. But the novices make all the attempts to create ruckus and many others deliberately do that. Once they are in, whether they get seats or not, they are a different lot. They lose their animal nature and become trained human beings. In the circus of life, they are the willing animals of performance. Human beings generally do not ‘behave’ inside bathrooms and lavatories. They are simple and natural being stripped off of all egos. Inside the metro trains too they tend to lose their ego by entering into a total dialogue with themselves. Sometimes, it is the same case with those people who are left alone in the platforms, especially in late or very early hours, waiting for the trains to come.

(Photograph by Manoj Bharti Gupta)

Manoj Bharti Gupta has been recording the people who travel by metro in Delhi for a long time. His photographs are candid shots of people who are totally unaware of a photographer amongst them. Each moving person in a city is a potential camera. He/she has always been like that. Whether he has a camera with him or not, a person who walks along the streets or travels by a vehicle doubles himself as a camera recording the visuals and events through his eyes and storing them into his memory. Today, every human being is a photographer, willingly or unwillingly. I should say that most of us are willing photographers when it comes to taking selfies and belfies (selfies of one’s own butts). Armed with mobile cameras everyone tries to become a photographer at some stage in their lives. The new motto should be, after Descrates, “I click therefore I am”. Manoj Bharti Gupta clicks photographs of the metro travelers in Delhi not because he want to collect the images of interesting people but he likes to see them being themselves. It could be purely my way of looking at Manoj Bharti Gupta’s works, but I would like to see them as capturing of images that are engrossed in their own selves.

 (Photograph by Manoj Bharti Gupta)

Out of several bodies of works that Manjo Bharti Gupta has created out of the metro travelers, I like a particular body works photographs, aptly titled ‘Women in Metro’. One may suspect him of having some strange sense of voyeurism. Voyeurism is a curse of the photographers and a good photographer cannot be born without a heightened sense of voyeurism. However, in a scenario where we are over burdened by theoretical awareness, voyeurism in and by photography could be a bad human quality. If the voyeur is a male then he could be treated as a criminal. Voyeurism becomes severe when it is seen as male gaze. All the photographs have a voyeuristic aspect in them. But gaze is peculiar to the male photography that makes the subject’s gaze nullified. Though Manoj Bharti Gupta takes the pictures of the women metro travelers as immersed in their egoless states, he does not employ his male gaze. Instead, he uses his lens as a dispassionate capturing device. He almost lets his eyes go innocent. As an art viewer and art critic, I fail to see any kind of male gaze in Manoj’s photographs. They are voyeuristic in a sense that he turns almost existential and poetic in his frames.

(Photograph by Manoj Bharti Gupta)

I look at those frames/photographs, where women are seen in different locations of a metro rail. They are inside the compartments or in the platforms. They are alone or could be in a crowd. They are accompanied by men at times, and often they are alone. There are women who share light moments with their spouses or boyfriends. There are women who sit alone and sleep or brood over something. There are women who listen to music. There are shoppers, there are wanders, there are nuns, women in military outfits and in their many guises. I particularly like those images of women who stand alone in lonely platforms. One of the most sensitive pictures taken by Manoj Bharti Gupta shows a small girl child standing alone near a metro mascot that prods the parents to take tickets for their kids who are more than three feet tall. There is another very sensitive image where he captures a pair of beautifully manicured and booted female legs. The most interesting pictures are those show women alone in the platforms; I can’t help if I am repeating it. They, surprisingly, in Manoj’s views do not look vulnerable. They are ready to face the world ‘all alone’.

 (Photograph by Manoj Bharti Gupta)

Aditya Dhawan is one of the photography artists in Delhi who keeps a consistent interest in photographing people inside the metro trains. His pictures show the social contrasts and social contracts. But Manoj’s pictures have sheer documentary quality, without leaning towards any kind of ideology. He does not make any value judgment of women or their contexts in his pictures. Manoj Bharti Gupta takes a lot of interest in the human ‘aloneness’, which is unique and lonely at the same time. Before closing this short note appreciation, I should say, I have not yet seen Manoj in person though both of us live in Delhi. 

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