Considered the “father of modern photo journalism”, French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson once said, “To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.”
Cartier-Bresson must have experienced this very joy when he clicked the last pictures of Sri Aurobindo Ghose with his spiritual companion Mirra Alfassa — The Mother, during his visit to the Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry (then Pondicherry) in April 1950. And why not? Sir Aurobindo and The Mother had not been photographed in 30 years.
When Cartier-Bresson arrived in Pondicherry, with ceaseless pleadings he was granted permission to take pictures of The Mother. Ultimately, The Mother obtained permission for Cartier-Bresson to take photographs of Sri Aurobindo himself.
This unbound and unpublished album of Cartier-Bresson is at the core of the Alkazi Foundation’s exhibition, “Mastering the Lens: Before and After Cartier-Bresson in Pondicherry”. Currently underway at Alliance Francaise, New Delhi, the exhibition is an attempt to trace the development of photography in Pondicherry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Foundation has dedicated this exhibition to the late wife of Cartier-Bresson, Martine Frank, who passed away last month.
Featuring 60 photographic works, the exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue produced by the Alkazi Collection of Photography and Mapin publications, with support from the French embassy.
The French ambassador to India, François Richier, brings out the shared history of India and France in the catalogue. “Mutual fascination and reciprocal influences through commercial and cultural exchanges date back to the 17th century. It started with the first meeting between French explorers and the Indian maharajahs, and was to continue in the 20th century with the friendship forged between André Malraux, the French minister of Culture, and Jawaharlal Nehru. The exchange of ideas is most evident in Pondicherry, where the first French merchants had set foot, producing a unique cultural melting pot, which includes original architecture, a deep-rooted attachment to French language and many other legacies within the framework of arts,” he writes.
One of the quintessential exchanges took place when Cartier-Bresson met India’s most important philosopher of the 20th century, Sri Aurobindo, together with The Mother. The photographer and his wife, were among the privileged few to be admitted into the Ashram, where he took some of the photographs of Sri Aurobindo a few months before his death.
“For too long, these pictures had remained unheralded. But thanks to the work of the Alkazi Foundation, they are now available to an enlarging audience… these pictures of Cartier-Bresson are a beautiful meditation on what France and India, two different and ancient cultures, can learn from each other — primarily the universality of art and spirituality,” Mr Richier writes in the chapter, “Renewing Ties: Linking India and France Through the Art of Photography”.
The history of photography in India is fundamentally linked to the French invention of the medium in the 19th century. “Some of the early French photographers in India include Alex de la Grange and Oscar Malitte who captured not only architectural splendours, but also the humanity that steered India from a colony to an independent nation. It is to pay homage to them and their contemporaries that an archive of images from the 19th century becomes part of our collective legacy and heritage…This exhibition is an exploration of lesser-known, but extremely illuminating works from the visual archives of the Alkazi Collection,” says Ebrahim Alkazi, chairman, Alkazi Foundation for the Arts (AFA).
The centuries-old black and white photos bring alive the rusticity and beauty of Pondicherry, wonderfully capturing the social and political lives of its people during the days of the Raj. From important buildings like the Governor’s House to the post-office, from the Government Square Fountain to the Lighthouse, the viewer gets to witness the old-world charm of Pondicherry by just flipping through the pages of the catalogue.
Rahaab Allana, curator for the AFA, believes that in the life of any photographer, there is a moment of conditioning and maturing.
“The exercise here has made us aware of the fact that professional photographers were also tempering with light and shade, seeking to find a professional manner and voice through their images. If we gain an insight into Cartier-Bresson, it is that he was able to work in collaboration and that his early ventures as a photographer were aesthetically experimental and exploratory,” he says.
Cartier-Bresson’s photographs of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother give viewers a sense of the personal lives of the philosopher and his spiritual companion and their activities within the Ashram that show not only their dedication, but also their reception and responsibility to the cause of human understanding and creative development.
“Bresson meticulously pens his thoughts, occasionally jotting down segments of his conversations with the French-born leader of Auroville, commonly known as The Mother, who meanders in and out of his frames, ‘silent as an apparition’. Her ‘strong, kind and fascinating eyes’ prompt a personal, if not biographical, perspective on photography history,” explains Allana.
Six photographs show The Mother playing tennis, bringing out her playful side, while others capture the daily activities at the Ashram and also Sri Aurobindo’s room and bed, “with the inevitable tiger skin, which seems the companion of those aiming at spiritual development”, as Cartier-Bresson writes in his personal diary.
Another note from his diary reads: “Four times a year Sri Aurobindo puts in an appearance before his disciples. They are allowed to file past him, one by one, and many deposit flowers at his feet. He sits immovable for hours, in a sort of tabernacle with silk ornament. Next to him is The Mother, his counterpart in divinity, in long gold veils covering her forehead down to the eyebrows and looking like a Byzantine Empress.”