Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Friday, September 23, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Lens-ing IT curated by Johny ML..
April 29th 2011, Ashna Gallery, New Delhi.
Artist Ranbir Kaleka.
Prof Vinay Lal delivering his paper.
In the audience sculptor Radhakrishnan who lives in Goa
Alex Fernandes Portraits in the audience
Amitav Das looking at the Goan Musicians and Tiatriste Display
Johny ML(Curator), the eminent photographer Ram Rahman, Ashna Singh, (curator Ashna Gallery and our gracious hostess), Abul Azad's ( Who instantly became a friend), Manisha Baswani ( fantastic portraits of Indian artist), Anoop Mathews, the celebrated Mr Sunil Gupta, Dr John Mathews (NID, Ahmedabad),Alex Fernandes Portraits (Goa), Eminent Historian Prof Vinay Lal (Delhi Unviersity/ University of California) delivered a brilliant paper on Poetics and Politics of Gandhi images.
LENS-ING IT: About This Curatorial Intervention
The concept of the show, ‘Lens-ing It’ evolved over a period of time, while as a curator of paintings, sculptures, videos, installations and site specific art forms I found the use of photography in most of these art forms so pronounced that one could not have wished away such presence and prominence. However, the treating of photography as one of the aides or tools for doing something else posed an interesting problematic before me and it was during the same period I noticed how so many galleries in India and elsewhere started taking an added interest in photography, photomontages, photo collages and digital works based on photography. This was an exceptionally new movement as far as Indian art scenario was concerned and I found, to my shock that in all these attempts the photography artists (lens based artists) getting a secondary treatment.
As we know that there have been concerted efforts from different parts of India to promote contemporary photography, still contemporary photography is subjected to a confused viewing as a variety of genres of photography impact upon people differently on a daily basis. Generally, even in the academic circles, photography is divided into different categories as per the fields to/in which the medium is put to use; for example we have news photography, fine art photography, industrial photography, fashion photography and so on. Though for the sake of classification such distinctions could be allowed, it would be interesting to see photography as a holistic medium which could carry a multitude of socio-cultural and politico-aesthetical dynamics. Right from political propaganda to gender positioning and from family albums to documentations, when put to use, photography plays a very pivotal role of cultural encoding.
This is the reason why, I chose to call this show, ‘Lens-ing It’. This is a show of eight artists who use photography as photography; they are lens based artists and often use their photographic prints as their final product. All aesthetical considerations and problems that otherwise faced and solved by any other visual artist too are dealt by these photography artists with an equal verve as expected of this medium and the context in which this medium is used. The politics, social positioning and the gender preferences of the photographers play a very strong role in the formulation of frames and the images. As far as my understanding goes, lens based artists are not those people who are ‘good at machines’. They are artists with a purpose and perspective. While they adopt strategies in framing their images, perhaps more than a studio based artist, they face challenges of a different sort. Between the momentary-ness of the image or the posed finality of the tableaux and the photography artist, there lies a series of spaces that have to be negotiated within the span of a click by the artist. Perhaps, for a studio based artist, he or she gets more time to deal with it.
I do not intend to push these artists into the realm of something called ‘pure photography’ because the word ‘pure’ or ‘purity’ could cause a different ideological reading. Hence, when I call these artists ‘lens based artists’ what I intend to say is this that they are artists who do not use their photography for creating another form of art. For these artists, photography and the photographic prints in themselves are complete forms (though opened ended often) which are liable to be analyzed contextually, using any tool or methodology, further as the images survive the time.
In this project, my curatorial intervention was to gather a ‘series’ from each photography artist. By a ‘series’ what I mean is a set of photographs taken in one go or over a period time in which the photography artist continue to be led by one particular aspect of his visual, ideological and aesthetical searches. Perhaps, this focus of the artist could be in a way an extension of his/her philosophy and aesthetics as reflected in their oeuvres. But by the curatorial focus, this one particular ‘series’ becomes a point of departure as well as arrival, which could supply a clue or a key to extensively analyze the works of the photography artist in question. Interestingly, all these photography artists in this show have been consistently following certain ideological as well as aesthetical aspect of photography throughout their creative career so far.
Ram Rahman, as one of the most active photography artists in India, has invested his energies in not only documenting and portraying the ideological and gender politics of his choice but also has employed his vision and camera for capturing the rare moments of intellectual rebellion in and around Delhi, where he resides half of the year, and elsewhere. The series that I have chosen together with the artist for this show is not done in one go. Taken over a period of two decades, in this ‘imagined’ series (by the curator) one could see people, identifiable by their contributions and stance in public life. There are politicians like our present prime minister, artists and activists and so on in these pictures. Reading within and without the context of the photograph and the frozen time exemplified in the pictures, despite their disparities in theme, one could see the aesthetics and politics of the artist conjoining them in one string as if these portrayals of the intelligentsia of Delhi were in fact exposing the chapters of an unpublished novel still waiting to be written down by the author.
Sunil Gupta, the veteran amongst the international contemporary photography artists is famous for his pictures of gender politics. As an individual who has declared his gender preferences long back, Sunil Gupta has been working towards establishing the aesthetics of difference through his photography that predominantly feature the man to man relationships both in the urban and rural scenarios. Also Sunil makes meanderings to his ancestral spaces and attempts to find the linkages between his present self and the selves that had formed him ages back. In the present series, Sunil surprises the viewers by presenting a series of works in which he captures the images of a friendly lesbian couple both in their public and private domains. Interestingly, the possible gaze of a male is subverted to establish the camaraderie between the subjects with alternative gender preferences. Sunil takes particular care to frame them in the most natural way, never giving a chance for the viewerly vulgarization of the context. With this series, Sunil seeks an extension of his gender politics and gives it more of an inclusive nature.
Alex Fernandes, born and brought up in a Mumbai neighborhood where Goans are settled, once relocated to Goa a few years back after his sojourn in different countries in the Middle East and also after relocating himself as a photography artist after a decade long career in the field of advertisement, devotes his time to create ‘series’ of ‘types’ of people who in the popular imagination represent Goa. The artist de-constructs the ‘stereotypes’ created by the popular movies and other popular narratives about Goans and in its place, establishes a series of ‘archetypes’ of people who in reality constitute the ‘racial character’ of a society. For the artist, racial character is not a term of insult on the contrary he, going by the Jungian ideas frames them as characters that determine the cultural make up of a society. Alex Fernandes is deeply political when he chooses these archetypal characters from the local theatre performers called Tiatriste and in imparting them with iconic status in the simulated studio portraits. In another series, keeping his aesthetics of studio portraits, he continues with idea of finding the archetypal Goan through the portrayal of the musicians in Goa.
Abul Kalam Azad, whom I call the master of the Mattanchery School of contemporary photography revels in documenting the immediate surroundings with a deeply rooted ideological positioning on politics and gender, and also he uses his creative forces to capture things that could subtly evoke autobiographical linkages between the artist and the images. In the present series in ‘Lens-ing It’ Azad presents a set of photographs generally titled ‘My Anger and Other Stories’. The random objects lying scattered on the floors and tables of his Mattanchery studio become the points of attention for the artist and by calling them as the embodies objects of his anger and the related emotions in his life, Azad personifies them in a different way and in a Barthesian sense, these sepia toned pictures become cultural codes of a person’s (artist’s) life. Abul Azad employs direct photography as his method. The angle from which the objects are captured shows how the artist holds these objects together in his life however scattered they are as if they were the sustaining narratives of his public and private life as an artist as well as an individual.
Vivek Vilasini’s ‘Between One Shore and Several Others’ is one of the highly acclaimed series produced by the artist during the last ten years of his career. In this series, he painstakingly documents the people who have names that do not have anything to do with their location, personality or profession. Some of them are named Stalin, some are Ho Chi Minh and Soviet Breeze. Vivek recaptures the socio-political and cultural contexts in which these people came to have these names. The living people with ‘un-localized’ names achieve semi-iconic status in these works, ironically emphasizing the contradictions that they embody not only within their contexts but also in an exposed global scenario. While giving them a sort of iconicity, with the iconic names as their claim to fame, Vivek also traces the cultural roots that could have imbibed the energies for their parents who named them after these well known personalities. This tracing amounts to the tracing of the journey of a population that has made its political moves entirely over an intellectual sphere depending on the translated literature and study classes. In Vivek’s series one could witness the micro scene of politico-cultural virtual migrations across the globe even within the erstwhile days of protected economies.
Deepak John Mathew has two series of works in ‘Lens-ing It’ show. Done over a period of time, the first series has images from his home interiors and the second one has images from an anthropological and historical museum. Seen simultaneously, they resonate with the same ideology, tendency and meaning. They preserve memories in certain ways but through various associations they also preserve the relationship between the extremes of love and violence. The domestic atmosphere devoid of its members but with the symbols and objects that they have left behind reminds one of the museum displays now detached from their original contexts. At the same time the museum displays with the mental associations that a viewer could make in their presence remind one of a domestic atmosphere where history is played out in its various microcosmic forms. Home is a place where the predatory tendencies of human beings are contained in a larger way and the museums are the places where the predatory prowess of human beings is flaunted in their most opulent ways. Deepak John plays between the subtle ironic relationship between the museum and domestic spaces.
Anup Mathew Thomas looks at the ways in which colonialism has taken various manifestations in our contemporary personal and social lives. There are memories and myths that help the human beings to form an ‘idea’ about their own lives. These memories could be those of colonialism working in personal lives both as history and an ideological notion. The images that Anup presents here have this history as a soft reminder of achievement and loss and at the same time how the notion of the same history works in an ideological level in our contemporary lives. These works, though not intended to be a series by the artist, once seen from this perspective could achieve the qualities of a ‘series’ that vivifies the artistic philosophy and aesthetics. Anup Mathew Thomas has been capturing the subtleties of life with all its paraphernalia and ironies in his works for almost a decade. And in some of his works he underlines ‘difference’ (between the notions of original and copy, ideology and presence, memory and manifestations of it) by playing them down to nil (almost to the point of merging the differences) and in the present series of works too, Anup does not comment on the things, instead he plays down the ‘difference’ between the ‘real’ and the ‘imagined’ as clearly seen in the works like Bar Hotel Arcadia, House on the Roadside and so on.
Manisha Gera Baswani’s series is all about her journey through the lives of the artists and art activists within the context of their work places. In these photographs, Manisha carefully collapses the idea of a secured private into the realm of a discursive public by capturing the most unguarded moments from their lives. The artist makes a silent intrusion in order to chronicle the lives and times of the cultural makers but at the same time by choosing her silent locations the artist speaks of her idea of looking at artists making and presenting art both with in the public and private spheres. Manisha has been working this project for the last twelve years, initially focusing on a couple of artists whom she considers her ‘Masters’ and later looking at more artists who would allow her to click them while they worked. One of the most interesting aspects of this series is that the subject-object polarization is considerably erased through the nullification of a strong subjective gaze on the body of the ‘objects’. Here the protagonists in each picture appear as if they were just an integral part of the whole setting and cannot be wrested apart for highlighting their presence.
Photography has always been there in the field of fine arts but the tendency is to treat it as something lesser to other forms of art. Today, in the globalized scenario, photographs have become the message carriers of change. Photographs speak to the people directly and the photography artists have become all the more aware of their worth as meaning makers. For me photographing is a political act.
JOHNY ML, Curator
The concept of the show, ‘Lens-ing It’ evolved over a period of time, while as a curator of paintings, sculptures, videos, installations and site specific art forms I found the use of photography in most of these art forms so pronounced that one could not have wished away such presence and prominence. However, the treating of photography as one of the aides or tools for doing something else posed an interesting problematic before me and it was during the same period I noticed how so many galleries in India and elsewhere started taking an added interest in photography, photomontages, photo collages and digital works based on photography. This was an exceptionally new movement as far as Indian art scenario was concerned and I found, to my shock that in all these attempts the photography artists (lens based artists) getting a secondary treatment.
As we know that there have been concerted efforts from different parts of India to promote contemporary photography, still contemporary photography is subjected to a confused viewing as a variety of genres of photography impact upon people differently on a daily basis. Generally, even in the academic circles, photography is divided into different categories as per the fields to/in which the medium is put to use; for example we have news photography, fine art photography, industrial photography, fashion photography and so on. Though for the sake of classification such distinctions could be allowed, it would be interesting to see photography as a holistic medium which could carry a multitude of socio-cultural and politico-aesthetical dynamics. Right from political propaganda to gender positioning and from family albums to documentations, when put to use, photography plays a very pivotal role of cultural encoding.
This is the reason why, I chose to call this show, ‘Lens-ing It’. This is a show of eight artists who use photography as photography; they are lens based artists and often use their photographic prints as their final product. All aesthetical considerations and problems that otherwise faced and solved by any other visual artist too are dealt by these photography artists with an equal verve as expected of this medium and the context in which this medium is used. The politics, social positioning and the gender preferences of the photographers play a very strong role in the formulation of frames and the images. As far as my understanding goes, lens based artists are not those people who are ‘good at machines’. They are artists with a purpose and perspective. While they adopt strategies in framing their images, perhaps more than a studio based artist, they face challenges of a different sort. Between the momentary-ness of the image or the posed finality of the tableaux and the photography artist, there lies a series of spaces that have to be negotiated within the span of a click by the artist. Perhaps, for a studio based artist, he or she gets more time to deal with it.
I do not intend to push these artists into the realm of something called ‘pure photography’ because the word ‘pure’ or ‘purity’ could cause a different ideological reading. Hence, when I call these artists ‘lens based artists’ what I intend to say is this that they are artists who do not use their photography for creating another form of art. For these artists, photography and the photographic prints in themselves are complete forms (though opened ended often) which are liable to be analyzed contextually, using any tool or methodology, further as the images survive the time.
In this project, my curatorial intervention was to gather a ‘series’ from each photography artist. By a ‘series’ what I mean is a set of photographs taken in one go or over a period time in which the photography artist continue to be led by one particular aspect of his visual, ideological and aesthetical searches. Perhaps, this focus of the artist could be in a way an extension of his/her philosophy and aesthetics as reflected in their oeuvres. But by the curatorial focus, this one particular ‘series’ becomes a point of departure as well as arrival, which could supply a clue or a key to extensively analyze the works of the photography artist in question. Interestingly, all these photography artists in this show have been consistently following certain ideological as well as aesthetical aspect of photography throughout their creative career so far.
Ram Rahman, as one of the most active photography artists in India, has invested his energies in not only documenting and portraying the ideological and gender politics of his choice but also has employed his vision and camera for capturing the rare moments of intellectual rebellion in and around Delhi, where he resides half of the year, and elsewhere. The series that I have chosen together with the artist for this show is not done in one go. Taken over a period of two decades, in this ‘imagined’ series (by the curator) one could see people, identifiable by their contributions and stance in public life. There are politicians like our present prime minister, artists and activists and so on in these pictures. Reading within and without the context of the photograph and the frozen time exemplified in the pictures, despite their disparities in theme, one could see the aesthetics and politics of the artist conjoining them in one string as if these portrayals of the intelligentsia of Delhi were in fact exposing the chapters of an unpublished novel still waiting to be written down by the author.
Sunil Gupta, the veteran amongst the international contemporary photography artists is famous for his pictures of gender politics. As an individual who has declared his gender preferences long back, Sunil Gupta has been working towards establishing the aesthetics of difference through his photography that predominantly feature the man to man relationships both in the urban and rural scenarios. Also Sunil makes meanderings to his ancestral spaces and attempts to find the linkages between his present self and the selves that had formed him ages back. In the present series, Sunil surprises the viewers by presenting a series of works in which he captures the images of a friendly lesbian couple both in their public and private domains. Interestingly, the possible gaze of a male is subverted to establish the camaraderie between the subjects with alternative gender preferences. Sunil takes particular care to frame them in the most natural way, never giving a chance for the viewerly vulgarization of the context. With this series, Sunil seeks an extension of his gender politics and gives it more of an inclusive nature.
Alex Fernandes, born and brought up in a Mumbai neighborhood where Goans are settled, once relocated to Goa a few years back after his sojourn in different countries in the Middle East and also after relocating himself as a photography artist after a decade long career in the field of advertisement, devotes his time to create ‘series’ of ‘types’ of people who in the popular imagination represent Goa. The artist de-constructs the ‘stereotypes’ created by the popular movies and other popular narratives about Goans and in its place, establishes a series of ‘archetypes’ of people who in reality constitute the ‘racial character’ of a society. For the artist, racial character is not a term of insult on the contrary he, going by the Jungian ideas frames them as characters that determine the cultural make up of a society. Alex Fernandes is deeply political when he chooses these archetypal characters from the local theatre performers called Tiatriste and in imparting them with iconic status in the simulated studio portraits. In another series, keeping his aesthetics of studio portraits, he continues with idea of finding the archetypal Goan through the portrayal of the musicians in Goa.
Abul Kalam Azad, whom I call the master of the Mattanchery School of contemporary photography revels in documenting the immediate surroundings with a deeply rooted ideological positioning on politics and gender, and also he uses his creative forces to capture things that could subtly evoke autobiographical linkages between the artist and the images. In the present series in ‘Lens-ing It’ Azad presents a set of photographs generally titled ‘My Anger and Other Stories’. The random objects lying scattered on the floors and tables of his Mattanchery studio become the points of attention for the artist and by calling them as the embodies objects of his anger and the related emotions in his life, Azad personifies them in a different way and in a Barthesian sense, these sepia toned pictures become cultural codes of a person’s (artist’s) life. Abul Azad employs direct photography as his method. The angle from which the objects are captured shows how the artist holds these objects together in his life however scattered they are as if they were the sustaining narratives of his public and private life as an artist as well as an individual.
Vivek Vilasini’s ‘Between One Shore and Several Others’ is one of the highly acclaimed series produced by the artist during the last ten years of his career. In this series, he painstakingly documents the people who have names that do not have anything to do with their location, personality or profession. Some of them are named Stalin, some are Ho Chi Minh and Soviet Breeze. Vivek recaptures the socio-political and cultural contexts in which these people came to have these names. The living people with ‘un-localized’ names achieve semi-iconic status in these works, ironically emphasizing the contradictions that they embody not only within their contexts but also in an exposed global scenario. While giving them a sort of iconicity, with the iconic names as their claim to fame, Vivek also traces the cultural roots that could have imbibed the energies for their parents who named them after these well known personalities. This tracing amounts to the tracing of the journey of a population that has made its political moves entirely over an intellectual sphere depending on the translated literature and study classes. In Vivek’s series one could witness the micro scene of politico-cultural virtual migrations across the globe even within the erstwhile days of protected economies.
Deepak John Mathew has two series of works in ‘Lens-ing It’ show. Done over a period of time, the first series has images from his home interiors and the second one has images from an anthropological and historical museum. Seen simultaneously, they resonate with the same ideology, tendency and meaning. They preserve memories in certain ways but through various associations they also preserve the relationship between the extremes of love and violence. The domestic atmosphere devoid of its members but with the symbols and objects that they have left behind reminds one of the museum displays now detached from their original contexts. At the same time the museum displays with the mental associations that a viewer could make in their presence remind one of a domestic atmosphere where history is played out in its various microcosmic forms. Home is a place where the predatory tendencies of human beings are contained in a larger way and the museums are the places where the predatory prowess of human beings is flaunted in their most opulent ways. Deepak John plays between the subtle ironic relationship between the museum and domestic spaces.
Anup Mathew Thomas looks at the ways in which colonialism has taken various manifestations in our contemporary personal and social lives. There are memories and myths that help the human beings to form an ‘idea’ about their own lives. These memories could be those of colonialism working in personal lives both as history and an ideological notion. The images that Anup presents here have this history as a soft reminder of achievement and loss and at the same time how the notion of the same history works in an ideological level in our contemporary lives. These works, though not intended to be a series by the artist, once seen from this perspective could achieve the qualities of a ‘series’ that vivifies the artistic philosophy and aesthetics. Anup Mathew Thomas has been capturing the subtleties of life with all its paraphernalia and ironies in his works for almost a decade. And in some of his works he underlines ‘difference’ (between the notions of original and copy, ideology and presence, memory and manifestations of it) by playing them down to nil (almost to the point of merging the differences) and in the present series of works too, Anup does not comment on the things, instead he plays down the ‘difference’ between the ‘real’ and the ‘imagined’ as clearly seen in the works like Bar Hotel Arcadia, House on the Roadside and so on.
Manisha Gera Baswani’s series is all about her journey through the lives of the artists and art activists within the context of their work places. In these photographs, Manisha carefully collapses the idea of a secured private into the realm of a discursive public by capturing the most unguarded moments from their lives. The artist makes a silent intrusion in order to chronicle the lives and times of the cultural makers but at the same time by choosing her silent locations the artist speaks of her idea of looking at artists making and presenting art both with in the public and private spheres. Manisha has been working this project for the last twelve years, initially focusing on a couple of artists whom she considers her ‘Masters’ and later looking at more artists who would allow her to click them while they worked. One of the most interesting aspects of this series is that the subject-object polarization is considerably erased through the nullification of a strong subjective gaze on the body of the ‘objects’. Here the protagonists in each picture appear as if they were just an integral part of the whole setting and cannot be wrested apart for highlighting their presence.
Photography has always been there in the field of fine arts but the tendency is to treat it as something lesser to other forms of art. Today, in the globalized scenario, photographs have become the message carriers of change. Photographs speak to the people directly and the photography artists have become all the more aware of their worth as meaning makers. For me photographing is a political act.
JOHNY ML, Curator
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Stereotyping the Goan: They Never Get It, They Never Will
Cecil Pinto's interesting observation on stereotyping ourselves as Goans that appeared in the Gomantak Times.
A couple of years ago, NDTV featured an interesting documentary “Where’s Sandra?” (Watch movie here)
This 18 minute film, I quote, ‘takes a playful look at the figure of Sandra from Bandra – part covetous fantasy of the racy Christian girl from Bombay who works as a secretary, wears a dress and likes to dance; part condescending stereotype of a dowdy, religious girl from a minority community.’
One of Mario Miranda’s endearing cartoon characters is the sexy secretary Miss Fonseca.
Mario has also caricatured so many Goan archetypes – the bhatkar (landlord), the gossipy elderly spinster, the priest, the fisherwoman, the Hindu gentleman, the drunk etc etc.
Alex Fernandes, Goa’s specialist portrait photographer, has taken a superb series of photographs of Tiatristes. Many tiatristes have taken archetypical characters and fleshed them out. Some of these existed, some are creations – all are caricatures.
Succorine’s colourfully clothed buxom fisherwoman, with flowers in her hair and a lot of gold chains and bangles, is very real.
But how real is Cyriaco Dias’ bhatkar? When did you last see a Goan landlord smoking a pipe, wearing suspenders, and wearing a silk house coat at home?
The comedian cook (cuzinher), the evil step-mother, the witty village belle… Do such people exist or are they creations of the tiatr genre?
When this writer (always wanted to say that – ‘this writer’ has such a formal pompous feel to it!) pokes fun at the Gulfee wife, the Moidekar, the Toronto Goan on holiday, or the belligerent and greedy South Goan taxi driver, we don’t take it to heart but accept it in the spirit of entertainment.
We are even willing to suspend disbelief despite gross exaggeration. Similarly we are ever forgiving of Mario Miranda and the tiatristes. Caricatures are never taken at face value – when the caricaturist is one of us.
But if, God forbid, an ‘outsider’ pokes fun at our foibles we are immediately up in arms.
In a Bollywood movie should a Goan character be portrayed as a drunk, or a Catholic girl be shown as being promiscuous, the entire moral brigade is up in arms. Mona, Robert, Julie, Lily, Anthony, Rosy, Peter, Maria, Michael… the daru drinkers, vamps, barmaids, cabaret dancers, bandleaders, henchmen are the characters that get attention and cause offense.
Nobody mentions the hundreds of times Goans and Christians are portrayed in a non-stereotypical manner. Go watch ‘Kal Ho Na Ho’ or ‘Black’ for example.
Mario Cabral e Sa often writes about the shenanigans of the Goan mistresses during the Portuguese era. Historian Fatima Gracias’s book on ‘Women in Goa’ has reams of interesting stuff.
For example at the end of the sixteenth century, (Page 4) “Life in the city of Goa was ceaseless rounds of amorous assignments and sexual delights…”. “Albuquerque also complained that Portuguese men carried women along with them out of Goa or to the ships for casual sex…”
As recent as 1931 the break up of registered prostitutes in Goa was about 1000 (with Ponda topping the list at 277, Bardez-186, Salcete-172, Ilhas-119). In 1936 the figures rose considerably (Hindu-1784, Christian-141, Muslims-9).
Fatima’s fascinating book goes on to examine the different categories of dancing girls (kalavantam / bailaderias) from pre-pubescent girls to widows, but I am getting distracted.
We can accept all this from Fatima or Mario because they are our fellow Goans. As also the statistic from me that there are more bars per capita in Goa than in any state/country in the whole of Asia, Africa or South America.
But when the 16th century Dutch traveller John Huyghen Van Linschoten writes that “married ladies drugged their husband with datura so they could have freedom with their lovers”, we find this unbelievable.
Or take the 19th century explorer and adventurer Richard Burton who claims that there were 20 establishments in Shiroda each having 50-60 dancing girls. We can’t take this from an outsider.
It is documented also how Goan dancing girls migrated to Bombay and were highly desired there as prostitutes and mistresses. Depending on who is doing the documentation, and the narration, we will either believe or rubbish this.
This acceptance of stereotyping or observations by insiders is true of every community.
On once social occasion I happened to be in the company of gay friends who were relating the most disgustingly delicious gay jokes. In a spirited fashion I cracked a vulgar gay joke myself. Conversation stopped and I was quite the social outcast till
lots more alcohol had been imbibed.
The point being it is ok for us to make fun of ourselves, but if you are an outsider you don’t have that privilege.
The token Muslim in many Hindi movies always wears a sherwani, sports a long beard and is a poet of sorts – or in recent times is a Pakistan trained militant. The Tamilian keeps repeating a thickly accented “ayyo amma”, and the Parsi gentleman is eccentric with an old world charm. Not vastly different from our tiatr stereotypes.
We Goans forward Sardaji jokes by the dozen. We stereotype them as dim witted and loud mouthed. Does that make our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh any less respected an economist and statesman? Do you think Sardajis care a whit? They know who they are. Why then do we get our collective imported panties in a knot when a Goan is stereotyped?
Bollywood is about formulae and what works is repeated endlessly. Brothers separated at birth, romance between people of incompatible religion/society, revenge for honour, unrealistic song and dance routines and yes, stereotyped communities. Tiatrs too have their formulae. Reality is suspended in both.
Let’s not shout “Objection mi Lord!” every time a Goan stereotype is caricatured by outsiders.
Let’s revel in the thought that we as a people live life abundantly and that’s something the outsiders can never fathom.
Our men are not drunks, our women are not easy. It’s just that we Goans, wherever we live, cultivate a certain lifestyle that others aspire for but can never quite acquire. Let them call us ‘sussegad’ without quite understanding the nuances of the word.
We will just wink at each other in our laidback way and understand why they are envious – of something they can never quite comprehend, imbibe or achieve.
This article first appeared in Gomantak Times.
also see
http://www.tambdimati.com/stereotyping-the-goan-they-never-get-it-they-never-will/
A couple of years ago, NDTV featured an interesting documentary “Where’s Sandra?” (Watch movie here)
This 18 minute film, I quote, ‘takes a playful look at the figure of Sandra from Bandra – part covetous fantasy of the racy Christian girl from Bombay who works as a secretary, wears a dress and likes to dance; part condescending stereotype of a dowdy, religious girl from a minority community.’
One of Mario Miranda’s endearing cartoon characters is the sexy secretary Miss Fonseca.
Mario has also caricatured so many Goan archetypes – the bhatkar (landlord), the gossipy elderly spinster, the priest, the fisherwoman, the Hindu gentleman, the drunk etc etc.
Alex Fernandes, Goa’s specialist portrait photographer, has taken a superb series of photographs of Tiatristes. Many tiatristes have taken archetypical characters and fleshed them out. Some of these existed, some are creations – all are caricatures.
Succorine’s colourfully clothed buxom fisherwoman, with flowers in her hair and a lot of gold chains and bangles, is very real.
But how real is Cyriaco Dias’ bhatkar? When did you last see a Goan landlord smoking a pipe, wearing suspenders, and wearing a silk house coat at home?
The comedian cook (cuzinher), the evil step-mother, the witty village belle… Do such people exist or are they creations of the tiatr genre?
When this writer (always wanted to say that – ‘this writer’ has such a formal pompous feel to it!) pokes fun at the Gulfee wife, the Moidekar, the Toronto Goan on holiday, or the belligerent and greedy South Goan taxi driver, we don’t take it to heart but accept it in the spirit of entertainment.
We are even willing to suspend disbelief despite gross exaggeration. Similarly we are ever forgiving of Mario Miranda and the tiatristes. Caricatures are never taken at face value – when the caricaturist is one of us.
But if, God forbid, an ‘outsider’ pokes fun at our foibles we are immediately up in arms.
In a Bollywood movie should a Goan character be portrayed as a drunk, or a Catholic girl be shown as being promiscuous, the entire moral brigade is up in arms. Mona, Robert, Julie, Lily, Anthony, Rosy, Peter, Maria, Michael… the daru drinkers, vamps, barmaids, cabaret dancers, bandleaders, henchmen are the characters that get attention and cause offense.
Nobody mentions the hundreds of times Goans and Christians are portrayed in a non-stereotypical manner. Go watch ‘Kal Ho Na Ho’ or ‘Black’ for example.
Mario Cabral e Sa often writes about the shenanigans of the Goan mistresses during the Portuguese era. Historian Fatima Gracias’s book on ‘Women in Goa’ has reams of interesting stuff.
For example at the end of the sixteenth century, (Page 4) “Life in the city of Goa was ceaseless rounds of amorous assignments and sexual delights…”. “Albuquerque also complained that Portuguese men carried women along with them out of Goa or to the ships for casual sex…”
As recent as 1931 the break up of registered prostitutes in Goa was about 1000 (with Ponda topping the list at 277, Bardez-186, Salcete-172, Ilhas-119). In 1936 the figures rose considerably (Hindu-1784, Christian-141, Muslims-9).
Fatima’s fascinating book goes on to examine the different categories of dancing girls (kalavantam / bailaderias) from pre-pubescent girls to widows, but I am getting distracted.
We can accept all this from Fatima or Mario because they are our fellow Goans. As also the statistic from me that there are more bars per capita in Goa than in any state/country in the whole of Asia, Africa or South America.
But when the 16th century Dutch traveller John Huyghen Van Linschoten writes that “married ladies drugged their husband with datura so they could have freedom with their lovers”, we find this unbelievable.
Or take the 19th century explorer and adventurer Richard Burton who claims that there were 20 establishments in Shiroda each having 50-60 dancing girls. We can’t take this from an outsider.
It is documented also how Goan dancing girls migrated to Bombay and were highly desired there as prostitutes and mistresses. Depending on who is doing the documentation, and the narration, we will either believe or rubbish this.
This acceptance of stereotyping or observations by insiders is true of every community.
On once social occasion I happened to be in the company of gay friends who were relating the most disgustingly delicious gay jokes. In a spirited fashion I cracked a vulgar gay joke myself. Conversation stopped and I was quite the social outcast till
lots more alcohol had been imbibed.
The point being it is ok for us to make fun of ourselves, but if you are an outsider you don’t have that privilege.
The token Muslim in many Hindi movies always wears a sherwani, sports a long beard and is a poet of sorts – or in recent times is a Pakistan trained militant. The Tamilian keeps repeating a thickly accented “ayyo amma”, and the Parsi gentleman is eccentric with an old world charm. Not vastly different from our tiatr stereotypes.
We Goans forward Sardaji jokes by the dozen. We stereotype them as dim witted and loud mouthed. Does that make our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh any less respected an economist and statesman? Do you think Sardajis care a whit? They know who they are. Why then do we get our collective imported panties in a knot when a Goan is stereotyped?
Bollywood is about formulae and what works is repeated endlessly. Brothers separated at birth, romance between people of incompatible religion/society, revenge for honour, unrealistic song and dance routines and yes, stereotyped communities. Tiatrs too have their formulae. Reality is suspended in both.
Let’s not shout “Objection mi Lord!” every time a Goan stereotype is caricatured by outsiders.
Let’s revel in the thought that we as a people live life abundantly and that’s something the outsiders can never fathom.
Our men are not drunks, our women are not easy. It’s just that we Goans, wherever we live, cultivate a certain lifestyle that others aspire for but can never quite acquire. Let them call us ‘sussegad’ without quite understanding the nuances of the word.
We will just wink at each other in our laidback way and understand why they are envious – of something they can never quite comprehend, imbibe or achieve.
This article first appeared in Gomantak Times.
also see
http://www.tambdimati.com/stereotyping-the-goan-they-never-get-it-they-never-will/
Friday, November 26, 2010
My name is Anthony Gonsalves (Portraits of Majorda's music genius)
Mr Anthony Gonsalves the musical genius from the Village of Majorda in Goa.
In Naresh Fernandes article Remembering Anthony Gonsalves from his website Taj Mahal Foxtrot; he talks of "Why Amithab Bachan jumped out of a giant Easter egg claiming to be the old man from Majorda".
The above photograph was the inspiration for my portraits of the maestro. As Naresh describes him "His speech was slow and his thoughts sometimes incoherent,...".
Unlike my usual portraits, where I coax the expression and pose out of my sitter within a few minutes, I had to be very patient to capture him in his right moods.
In Naresh Fernandes article Remembering Anthony Gonsalves from his website Taj Mahal Foxtrot; he talks of "Why Amithab Bachan jumped out of a giant Easter egg claiming to be the old man from Majorda".
Unlike my usual portraits, where I coax the expression and pose out of my sitter within a few minutes, I had to be very patient to capture him in his right moods.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Domnic D'souza, the mysterious photographer from Shiolim.
Goa Gil told me of Dominic D'souza, a photographer from the village of Shiolim in Goa. Dominic was a good friend of Gil and Arianne and also shared my interest in photographing the 'Hippy' culture in North Goa, a good two decades or so before I did.
Personally, I had never heard of Dominic before this time, nor do I have any knowledge of his current whereabouts.
Gil showed me two of the prints made by Dominic in the eighties.I would assume that Dominic printed his own photographs.These B&W portraits have their backgrounds masked out during the printing process and are also hand tinted.
Photographs courtesy Goa Gil
Personally, I had never heard of Dominic before this time, nor do I have any knowledge of his current whereabouts.
Gil showed me two of the prints made by Dominic in the eighties.I would assume that Dominic printed his own photographs.These B&W portraits have their backgrounds masked out during the printing process and are also hand tinted.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Camera lucida- Roland Barthes
Barthes considers photography as asymbolic, irreducible to the codes of language or culture, acting on the body as much as on the mind. The book (Camera Lucida) develops the twin concepts of studium and punctum: studium denoting the cultural, linguistic, and political interpretation of a photograph, punctum denoting the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it. ...Roland Barthes -Camera lucida
Sunday, June 13, 2010
INCOGNITO (Wigs and costumes in Tiatre)
I was looking at the Tiatre portraits for the well known fashion designer Wendell Rodricks who is working on his book on Goan costumes. I came up with an interesting set of character transformations the Tiatre actors underwent using wigs and costumes.
Though some of these transformations are subtle, others could be at the extreme ends of the spectrum, even going as far as cross dressing.
Click Here for Slide show
Though some of these transformations are subtle, others could be at the extreme ends of the spectrum, even going as far as cross dressing.
Click Here for Slide show
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Retrieval Systems random snapshots
Left to right: Myself, Ranjit Hoskote & Baiju Parthan. I had the pleasure of meeting great artist like Jatin Das and Gopi Gajwani who complemented my 'Tiatriste' portraits. For information about the gallery please see http://www.artalivegallery.com/Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The art of photography
Photography always transforms what it describes. The art of photography is to control that transformation....
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Portraits of the Goan musician Sanya Cotta
On the 9th of Aug 2009 I had the pleasure of photographing Miss Sanya Cotta in Panjim, Goa. The daughter of the well known Goan guitarist Mr. Schubert & Mercy Cotta, Sanya is doing the pedagogic part of her music education at the ‘Junge Deutsche Philharmonie’, in Nuremberg, Germany. She also teaches music at the school there.
Sanya, will perform in Goa at the Kala Academy on the 26th of August 2009 accompanied by Romanian pianist, Delia Varga.
Try not to miss the concert. See also Sanya My la Cotta with Goa Symphony Orchestra.
Click to view musicians slide show
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Tiatriste and Jungian archetypes
Origins of Archetypes
The word archetype appeared in European texts as early as 1545, It derives from the Latin noun archetypum and that from the Greek noun (archetypon), meaning "first-moulded". An archetype is an original model of a person, ideal example, or a prototype after which others are copied, patterned, or emulated; a symbol universally recognized by all. In psychology, an archetype is a model of a person, personality, or behavior. A stereotype on the other hand is a personality type observed multiple times, especially an oversimplification of such a type
The origins of the archetypal hypothesis date back as far as Plato. ‘The Theory of Forms’ typically refers to Plato's belief that the material world as it seems to us is not the real world, but only a shadow of the real world. The forms, according to Plato, are roughly speaking archetypes or abstract representations of the many types and properties of things we see all around us.
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung *compared archetypes to Platonic ideas. Archetypes, according to Jung were…innate universal psychic dispositions that form the ‘substrate’ from which the basic themes of human life emerge. Being universal and innate, their influence can be detected in the form of myths, symbols, rituals and instincts of human beings. Archetypes are components of the collective unconscious and serve to organize, direct and inform human thought and behavior.
Jung also realized the reality of psyche and thought the mythic archetype contained in the psyche had autonomy, an agency beyond the individual. He proposed that the archetype had a dual nature; it exists both in the psyche and in the world at large. Jung introduced the notion of a race mind, racial consciousness archetypes.
Archetypal psychology was developed by James Hillman in the second half of the 20th century attempts to recognize the myriad fantasies and myths—gods, goddesses, demigods, mortals and animals—that shape and are shaped by our psychological lives, that the ego is but one psychological fantasy within an assemblage of fantasies.
Archetypes are ontological manifestations of the creative Ground of Being-itself (Paul Tillich), essentially divine thought forms. Whitehead called them “complex eternal objects.”
The archetypal forms behind all myths belong to the mystery of the creative ground of everything that is.”
Tillich clearly saw the archetypes as ontological structures. What this means in his own philosophical system is that since Being (ontos) = the Divine, the archetypes are essences or thoughts forms in the Divine Life, to put it symbolically rather than in ontological language. Put alternatively, archetypes arise from within the creative Ground of Being-itself.
Experiencing the Archetype (The Psychologist perspective)
The Value of the Archetype
Archetypes can be found in nearly all forms of literature, with their motifs being predominantly rooted in folklore. All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes. This is particularly true not only of religious ideas; even the central concepts of science, philosophy, and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form they are variants of archetypal ideas created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality.
‘Tiatriste’ as the Archetypal image. Click here to view slide show
As a second generation Goan born in Dhobitalo, Mumbai, I had spent all of my adult life being disassociated from mainstream Goan culture. I spoke Konkani only with my Grandmother and English was the primary language of conversation at home and elsewhere. The cosmopolitan life in Mumbai exposed me to various influences and I was never really a ‘Tiatre’ fan, but living in ‘Dhobitalo’ one would often bump into famous ‘Tiatriste’, most of them lived in close proximity to Sonapur Church and were a common sight after Sunday mass. ‘Dhobitalao’, was described by many as the “Goan enclave of Mumbai”.
The ‘Tiatriste’ portraits confirm to the Jungian perspective of archetypal images for various reasons. Susan Sontag talks about a three way relationship between the photographer, the object of the photograph and the viewer of the same. Me being a photographer of Goan origin, the “object”/ ‘Tiatriste’ in their exaggerated stage garbs, and the viewer’s involvement (particularly the Goan race mind) that create this ‘identifiable fantasy’.
Though it sounds like a big, fancy word, an "archetype" is something we all experience and know intimately from the inside. Indefinable, an archetype is like a psychological instinct or informational field of influence which patterns our psyche, our experience of the world around us and how we experience ourselves. Archetypes are the image-making factor in the psyche, informing and giving shape to the images in our mind and the dreams of our soul, and as such, they insist on being approached imaginatively.
Somewhere in the Goan psyche we have Archetypal figures of who we were as a race, a culture and this is from where we draw from to express our fantasy. We even recognize fictional characters as entities for whom we might predict behavior and sympathize. (What makes the character of Ganesh recognizable to worshipers as a god, for instance?)Ironically, archetypes are not learned. They are inborn tendencies to experience the world. This imagery I believe comes from a Universal experience. Strictly speaking, archetypal figures such as the Bhatkar, the Sasumai, the fisherwoman etc are not archetypes, but archetypal images which have crystallised out of the archetypes. The images are objective, but universal.
Ranjit Hoskote, poet, cultural theorist, curator, and my friend writes “Unlike the caricatures that the popular Hindi cinema employs to represent regional cultures – such figures are stereotypes, not archetypes – the ‘Tiatristes’ play out readily identifiable personae in whom the audience has strong emotional investments, at a personal as well as a collective level. Through their interpretations, they can exteriorise and provide a safety valve for the potentially disruptive energies of resentment and mutiny that every hierarchically ordered society would nourish; they also allow for the genial confrontation of problems that afflict the body collective, and for the anticipation and recognition of crisis in the public sphere”. (See Ranjit Hoskote’s essay http://www.alexfernandesportraits.com/hoskote.html also Alex Fernandes in conversation with Ranjit Hoskote)
Strangely enough the great Goan cartoonist, Mario de Miranda in his drawings had almost identical archetypal images of Goans to my ‘Tiatrise’ portraits. Though I had been influenced by Mario’s work right from my early years, (I was particularly fond of his Goan caricatures) I had not intended to emulate Mario’s figures in any way.
Prior to photographing the ‘Tiatriste’, I had instructed the actors to dress in the stage garbs of the characters that they best portrayed on stage. As I was shooting the portraits, I realized that I was getting images that looked very similar to Mario’s Goan characters, right down to the almost identical costumes worn by Mario’s characters and the ‘Tiatriste’. Somehow even with an exaggerated stage costume, the ‘Tiatriste’ was transformed into easily identifiable archetypal image before the camera.
I do not look on my portraits as just an illustration of ‘Tiatriste’ or ‘Tiatre’ but I always felt it has much broader implications. In a lecture entitled ‘Portraits of our people' at the Xavier’s History Research Centre in Porvorim, Goa, I had tried to explain the impact from the Archetype on my portraits. A view that both Ranjit Hoskote and myself share, but unfortunately one that somehow seems to be obscured.
The Goan portraits as a series have a temporal dimension and semiotic context. They are visual symbols that tell a story of a people in a certain time. The archetypes form a dynamic substratum common to the Goan “race mind”. The various parts that represent the whole entity for example, like their stage names, body shapes, postures, clothing etc that represents the content, the collection of ideas and perceptions that we circle in a metaphysical Venn diagram to delineate exactly what constitutes a particular entity. The collective ideas that lie within within the circle as in the hand that pushes the pen to draw it (in Mario's case) or that presses the shutter release (in my case) – or rather in the mind that guides that hand.
The archetypes had synchronastically manifested themselves in Mario’s work, in ‘Tiatre’ and my portraits. Synchronicities are those moments of "meaningful coincidence" when the boundary dissolves between the inner and the outer. Synchronicities occur when we step out of the personal dimension of our experience and access what is called the archetypal dimension of experience. An archetype synchronistically revealing itself in the outside world is a reflection that this same condition is in the process of being inwardly realized.
Thus, while archetypes themselves may be conceived as a relative few innate nebulous forms, from these may arise innumerable images, symbols and patterns of behavior. While the emerging images and forms are apprehended consciously, the archetypes which inform them are elementary structures which are unconscious and more difficult to apprehend. Being unconscious, the existence of archetypes can only be deduced indirectly by examining behavior, images, art, myths, etc. They are inherited potentials which are actualized when they enter consciousness as images or manifest in behavior on interaction with the outside world.
Alex A. A. Fernandes.
see related article by Cecil Pinto : http://alexfernandesphotography.blogspot.com/2011/01/stereotyping-goan-they-never-get-it.html
* Myth imparts structure to space and time; myth weaves the world into being. According to the perspective of the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, the structure of myth is buried deep in hidden process of the psyche, and this structure recurs universally in individuals and across all human societies. From his own dreams, cross-cultural studies, and the material provided by his patients, Jung developed the theory of “collective consciousness”, a repository of myth, symbol and archetypes that emanates from a source beyond the individual mind. Jung describes the archetypes of the collective unconscious as “spontaneous phenomenon which are not subject to our will, and we are therefore justified in ascribing to them a certain autonomy”. A mythological or archetypal complex- such as Judeo – Christian Apocalypse – is, from this Jungian perspective, ultimately a psychic event that can take material manifestation, like a collective dream coming to life. - From Daniel Pinchbeck's 'The Return of Quetzalcoatl'
The word archetype appeared in European texts as early as 1545, It derives from the Latin noun archetypum and that from the Greek noun (archetypon), meaning "first-moulded". An archetype is an original model of a person, ideal example, or a prototype after which others are copied, patterned, or emulated; a symbol universally recognized by all. In psychology, an archetype is a model of a person, personality, or behavior. A stereotype on the other hand is a personality type observed multiple times, especially an oversimplification of such a type
The origins of the archetypal hypothesis date back as far as Plato. ‘The Theory of Forms’ typically refers to Plato's belief that the material world as it seems to us is not the real world, but only a shadow of the real world. The forms, according to Plato, are roughly speaking archetypes or abstract representations of the many types and properties of things we see all around us.
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung *compared archetypes to Platonic ideas. Archetypes, according to Jung were…innate universal psychic dispositions that form the ‘substrate’ from which the basic themes of human life emerge. Being universal and innate, their influence can be detected in the form of myths, symbols, rituals and instincts of human beings. Archetypes are components of the collective unconscious and serve to organize, direct and inform human thought and behavior.
Jung also realized the reality of psyche and thought the mythic archetype contained in the psyche had autonomy, an agency beyond the individual. He proposed that the archetype had a dual nature; it exists both in the psyche and in the world at large. Jung introduced the notion of a race mind, racial consciousness archetypes.
Archetypal psychology was developed by James Hillman in the second half of the 20th century attempts to recognize the myriad fantasies and myths—gods, goddesses, demigods, mortals and animals—that shape and are shaped by our psychological lives, that the ego is but one psychological fantasy within an assemblage of fantasies.
Archetypes are ontological manifestations of the creative Ground of Being-itself (Paul Tillich), essentially divine thought forms. Whitehead called them “complex eternal objects.”
The archetypal forms behind all myths belong to the mystery of the creative ground of everything that is.”
Tillich clearly saw the archetypes as ontological structures. What this means in his own philosophical system is that since Being (ontos) = the Divine, the archetypes are essences or thoughts forms in the Divine Life, to put it symbolically rather than in ontological language. Put alternatively, archetypes arise from within the creative Ground of Being-itself.
Experiencing the Archetype (The Psychologist perspective)
The Value of the Archetype
Archetypes can be found in nearly all forms of literature, with their motifs being predominantly rooted in folklore. All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes. This is particularly true not only of religious ideas; even the central concepts of science, philosophy, and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form they are variants of archetypal ideas created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality.
‘Tiatriste’ as the Archetypal image. Click here to view slide show
As a second generation Goan born in Dhobitalo, Mumbai, I had spent all of my adult life being disassociated from mainstream Goan culture. I spoke Konkani only with my Grandmother and English was the primary language of conversation at home and elsewhere. The cosmopolitan life in Mumbai exposed me to various influences and I was never really a ‘Tiatre’ fan, but living in ‘Dhobitalo’ one would often bump into famous ‘Tiatriste’, most of them lived in close proximity to Sonapur Church and were a common sight after Sunday mass. ‘Dhobitalao’, was described by many as the “Goan enclave of Mumbai”.
The ‘Tiatriste’ portraits confirm to the Jungian perspective of archetypal images for various reasons. Susan Sontag talks about a three way relationship between the photographer, the object of the photograph and the viewer of the same. Me being a photographer of Goan origin, the “object”/ ‘Tiatriste’ in their exaggerated stage garbs, and the viewer’s involvement (particularly the Goan race mind) that create this ‘identifiable fantasy’.
Though it sounds like a big, fancy word, an "archetype" is something we all experience and know intimately from the inside. Indefinable, an archetype is like a psychological instinct or informational field of influence which patterns our psyche, our experience of the world around us and how we experience ourselves. Archetypes are the image-making factor in the psyche, informing and giving shape to the images in our mind and the dreams of our soul, and as such, they insist on being approached imaginatively.
Somewhere in the Goan psyche we have Archetypal figures of who we were as a race, a culture and this is from where we draw from to express our fantasy. We even recognize fictional characters as entities for whom we might predict behavior and sympathize. (What makes the character of Ganesh recognizable to worshipers as a god, for instance?)Ironically, archetypes are not learned. They are inborn tendencies to experience the world. This imagery I believe comes from a Universal experience. Strictly speaking, archetypal figures such as the Bhatkar, the Sasumai, the fisherwoman etc are not archetypes, but archetypal images which have crystallised out of the archetypes. The images are objective, but universal.
Ranjit Hoskote, poet, cultural theorist, curator, and my friend writes “Unlike the caricatures that the popular Hindi cinema employs to represent regional cultures – such figures are stereotypes, not archetypes – the ‘Tiatristes’ play out readily identifiable personae in whom the audience has strong emotional investments, at a personal as well as a collective level. Through their interpretations, they can exteriorise and provide a safety valve for the potentially disruptive energies of resentment and mutiny that every hierarchically ordered society would nourish; they also allow for the genial confrontation of problems that afflict the body collective, and for the anticipation and recognition of crisis in the public sphere”. (See Ranjit Hoskote’s essay http://www.alexfernandesportraits.com/hoskote.html also Alex Fernandes in conversation with Ranjit Hoskote)
Strangely enough the great Goan cartoonist, Mario de Miranda in his drawings had almost identical archetypal images of Goans to my ‘Tiatrise’ portraits. Though I had been influenced by Mario’s work right from my early years, (I was particularly fond of his Goan caricatures) I had not intended to emulate Mario’s figures in any way.
Prior to photographing the ‘Tiatriste’, I had instructed the actors to dress in the stage garbs of the characters that they best portrayed on stage. As I was shooting the portraits, I realized that I was getting images that looked very similar to Mario’s Goan characters, right down to the almost identical costumes worn by Mario’s characters and the ‘Tiatriste’. Somehow even with an exaggerated stage costume, the ‘Tiatriste’ was transformed into easily identifiable archetypal image before the camera.
I do not look on my portraits as just an illustration of ‘Tiatriste’ or ‘Tiatre’ but I always felt it has much broader implications. In a lecture entitled ‘Portraits of our people' at the Xavier’s History Research Centre in Porvorim, Goa, I had tried to explain the impact from the Archetype on my portraits. A view that both Ranjit Hoskote and myself share, but unfortunately one that somehow seems to be obscured.
The Goan portraits as a series have a temporal dimension and semiotic context. They are visual symbols that tell a story of a people in a certain time. The archetypes form a dynamic substratum common to the Goan “race mind”. The various parts that represent the whole entity for example, like their stage names, body shapes, postures, clothing etc that represents the content, the collection of ideas and perceptions that we circle in a metaphysical Venn diagram to delineate exactly what constitutes a particular entity. The collective ideas that lie within within the circle as in the hand that pushes the pen to draw it (in Mario's case) or that presses the shutter release (in my case) – or rather in the mind that guides that hand.
The archetypes had synchronastically manifested themselves in Mario’s work, in ‘Tiatre’ and my portraits. Synchronicities are those moments of "meaningful coincidence" when the boundary dissolves between the inner and the outer. Synchronicities occur when we step out of the personal dimension of our experience and access what is called the archetypal dimension of experience. An archetype synchronistically revealing itself in the outside world is a reflection that this same condition is in the process of being inwardly realized.
Thus, while archetypes themselves may be conceived as a relative few innate nebulous forms, from these may arise innumerable images, symbols and patterns of behavior. While the emerging images and forms are apprehended consciously, the archetypes which inform them are elementary structures which are unconscious and more difficult to apprehend. Being unconscious, the existence of archetypes can only be deduced indirectly by examining behavior, images, art, myths, etc. They are inherited potentials which are actualized when they enter consciousness as images or manifest in behavior on interaction with the outside world.
Alex A. A. Fernandes.
see related article by Cecil Pinto : http://alexfernandesphotography.blogspot.com/2011/01/stereotyping-goan-they-never-get-it.html
* Myth imparts structure to space and time; myth weaves the world into being. According to the perspective of the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, the structure of myth is buried deep in hidden process of the psyche, and this structure recurs universally in individuals and across all human societies. From his own dreams, cross-cultural studies, and the material provided by his patients, Jung developed the theory of “collective consciousness”, a repository of myth, symbol and archetypes that emanates from a source beyond the individual mind. Jung describes the archetypes of the collective unconscious as “spontaneous phenomenon which are not subject to our will, and we are therefore justified in ascribing to them a certain autonomy”. A mythological or archetypal complex- such as Judeo – Christian Apocalypse – is, from this Jungian perspective, ultimately a psychic event that can take material manifestation, like a collective dream coming to life. - From Daniel Pinchbeck's 'The Return of Quetzalcoatl'
Friday, March 20, 2009
Goa Gil and Ariane
Musician Goa Gil is an icon in Anjuna & Vagator , north Goa. He played rock and roll with the ‘Big dipper band’ & the ‘Anjuna Jam Band’ at the early beach parties in the 70’s (In my B&W portrait of Gil, he holds a calendar from new year’s 1978 party showing the ‘Big dipper band’ in a group photo). Gil had jammed with Goan musicians like his friend the late August Braganza and drummer William D’souza from Mapuca.
The introduction of techno and its techniques to Goa led to what eventually became the Goa Trance style; early pioneers included DJ’s Laurent, Fred Disco, Swiss Rudi, and Goa Gil. Many "parties" (generally similar to raves but with a more mystic flavor, at least in early 1990s) in Goa revolve entirely around this genre of music. In other countries, Goa Trance is also often played at raves, festivals and parties in conjunction with other styles of trance and techno.
Goa parties have a definitive visual aspect - the use of "fluoro" (fluorescent paint) is common on clothing and on decorations such as tapestries. The graphics on these decorations are usually associated with topics such as aliens, Hinduism, other religious (especially eastern) images, mushrooms, shamanistic technology and other psychedelic art. Shrines in front of the DJ stands featuring religious items are also common decorations. Dreadlocked Goa freaks adorned with tattoos, body piercings and freaky party costumes kicked up huge clouds of red dust whilst dancing to psychedelic Goa trance music. Their fashion sense expressed the counterculture that they belonged to.
It was like being ‘Alex in wonderland’, I can still reminisce the trance parties at ‘Disco valley’ in Vagator in the early 90’s with Gil playing his very special Goa psychedelic music.He still continues to play and make music in Goa and all over the world.
After a long wait I finally managed to do the portrait with Gil and Ariane at their house in Anjuna (1st March 2009).
-Alex Fernandes (Goa, 2009) Click to view musicians slide show
(In the photo: Ariane, Dr Albert Hoffman and Gill at a party in Basel next to Dr Hoffmans house. Photo courtesy Goa Gil)
Goa Gil: A Short Biography
Goa Gil is an American-born musician, DJ and ex-party organizer. He is one of the founders of the Goa trance and psytrance movement in electronic dance music.
Gil was born in 1951 and grew up in San Francisco, California. He witnessed the birth of the hippie movement and acid rock, and was involved with ‘The freak collective family Dog’ and the 60’s rock group ‘The Son’s of Champlin’. Feeling that the San Francisco musical scene was falling apart, he left in 1969, going first to Amsterdam and then to India, settling in the hippie Mecca of Goa. On his extensive travels in India he met the ‘Sadhus’ (wandering holy men of India). Gil became himself a Sadhu, Baba Mangalanand, in the order of the Juna Akhara, under the Guru, Mahant Prem Giri Ji Maharaj.
In the mid 70’s, Gil and his friends soon gathered some equipment (at first some of which was rented from August Braganza) and started playing live music all night long on the Goa beaches. During the early 1980s, many Goa hippies were becoming increasingly fascinated with early electronic music groups such as ‘Kraftwerk’ and ‘Front 242’. The mix of outdoor dance parties with Eastern mystical and spiritual overtones came to define the aesthetic of the Goa party movement. For Gil, dance is an active form of meditation and the use of trance music is a way to "redefine the ancient tribal ritual for the 21st century". During the 1990s, the Goa trance movement spread by way of foreign backpackers of various nationalities who attended parties in India. Nowadays, Gil is still based in Goa for several months of the year, and spends the rest of his time travelling and on tour playing at parties all over the world.
Gil’s partner Ariane MacAvoy is herself a child of french goan "hippes". Ariane, who is an excellent djembe player and african dance instructor makes music as “Nimba”. Together Gil and Ariane make music as “The Nommos”.
Goa Gil and Arianes’ CDs are avaliable in India and worldwide on Avatar Records
(http://www.avatar-music.com/artists/artists01.htm)
Visit (http://www.goagil.com) for more information on Gil and Ariane.
The site has a lot of interesting pictures from the 70’s.
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