The Caravan — February 2018

89

out of focus · books

FEBRUARY 2018

across the image. A smiling woman

in conversation, caught in sunlight

on the right; an older man, on the far

left, heading for a bath; children, fac-

ing away from us in the near ground; a

turbaned man seated at the top of the

steps. It is true that a young boy, neatly

posing, stands in the middle, his shad-

ow crisp against the white wall. But

he is hardly the photograph’s subject.

Looking down, too far to appear pen-

sive, he has been chosen for the maroon

dhoti he is wearing—which matches

the colour of the shrine beside him—as

much as anything else.

Morning bears some resemblance to

the work of the American photographer

Alex Webb, who also made multi-scene

group portraits. But Webb’s images

are thrilling precisely because of their

polyphonic drama and interplay. Nuevo

Laredo, Tamaulipas (1996), for example,

juxtaposes young lovers in the fore-

ground with a silhouette of a father

holding his child in the background;

there is an internal logic and emotional

immediacy here that is absent from

Singh’s scene. (Bear in mind that Webb

was an outsider in Mexico, where he

shot the photo.)

Granted, there is no religious frenzy

in Morning; Singh is not peddling ex-

otic visions of Benares. But neither is

he offering a vision of his own. Webb’s

human stories call to one another, sug-

gesting a larger conception of society or

fate, a conception that, above all, chal-

lenges us to think. Singh’s characters

merely occupy the same scene.

There is likewise no question of

people pausing and reflecting, or, more

generally, of the frame as a space for

reflection. A pensive image has to feel

subliminally animated by thought;

there needs to be a sense of mystery.

The photographer has to convince us

above: Crawford Market,

Bombay, Maharashtra, 1993

succession raghubir singh