South Asian Photo Exhibit Ultimately Too Broad

A spontaneous snapshot of life on the streets hangs side-by-side with an intricately assembled digital montage in “Focus on South Asian Photography: Recent Works,” on display at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum until May 6. Such juxtapositions are common throughout the showcase.

But although its attempt to illustrate diversity is commendable, the exhibit’s scope is ultimately too large for the allotted number of works, forming a disjointed sampling—rather than a comprehensive collection—of photographs.

DECEPTIVELY SMALL

Curated by Kimberly Masteller, assistant curator of Islamic and Later Indian Art, the exhibition presents different styles of photography taken by artists of South Asian descent.

Paradoxically, the show manages to be too broad and still remain quite small: It has a total of six framed photographs. The show is meant to complement “Overlapping Realms: Arts of the Islamic World and India, 900-1900,” and is housed in the same room as the larger exhibit. In the exhibition’s defense, it certainly is an interesting juxtaposition to see such modern photographs alongside art dating back to the 9th century.

Ketaki Sheth’s dramatic 2004 gelatin silver print, “No Parking, Bhuleshwar, Bombay (Mumbai),” opens the collection. The accompanying text says that Sheth confronts the exoticism that is oft the subject of Indian photography through this deliberately “unpicturesque” shot.

A black-and-white photograph capturing a street scene from a handheld camera, the image immediately places the viewer within a hostile environment, almost repelling us. Yet, it is precisely this jarring quality that makes the photograph intriguing.

A white “No Parking” sign stands out against a darkened background, as if attempting to ward off the viewer, and a motor scooter parked along the curb occupies much of the foreground. Adding to the discord caused by the blatant violation of the sign’s message, the vehicle creates a definite barrier between the two worlds of the viewer and subjects. A woman, sitting in the negative space carved out by the scooter, is visibly uncomfortable with the photograph being taken: her body is tense, and her eyes look off to the side in a startling expression of wild fear. The facial expressions and body language of the figures evoke an unsettling feeling that is not easily forgotten.

NOT MUCH THERE

Yet, after this piece, the energy of the show dwindles. The photographs are too diverse, with the only tangible connection between them being the artists’ shared ethnicity. It’s difficult to figure out the correlation from one work to another.

In fact, each work would probably be stronger if it were to stand alone, as a couple of the works are very interesting, at least conceptually.

Dayanita Singh’s “Visitors at Anand Bhavan, Allahabad” (2000) turns the lens on a group of museum visitors, in effect having the viewer see the viewers of another exhibit. In Vivan Sundaram’s “Bourgeois Family: Mirror Frieze,” from the series “Re-take of America” (2001), the artist plays with scans of photographs from his family’s archive, putting together images of different generations into one frame.

INCONGRUOUS

The inclusion of the last piece in the collection, however—Neeta Madahar’s “Sustenance 104,” from the series “Sustenance” (2003)—is particularly puzzling. Its incongruence stands out not just because of its large size but also because of its subject matter. While the other works have some visible recognition of the artists’ descent, Madahar captures birds visiting feeders—­in Framingham, Massachusetts, no less.

While laudable that the exhibition brings together the diverse works of photographers in one forum, the common thread among the photographs is the artists’ shared ethnicity ultimately seems to be too weak a basis on which to center a collection.