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Ram Rahman
Ram Rahman has captured the vibrant
visual culture of the Indian street in these photographs. His camera
delights in the curious juxtapositions of advertising, political
sloganeering, religious icons and graffiti which abound on India’s
streets. His use of the black and white image flattens and compacts the
frame to create images which are collage-like. He sees this as a
people’s visual culture, much of which comes together by sheer chance.
These chance assemblages, often on a huge scale, are the stage sets
against which daily life unfolds in a theatre of the street. The images
capture the chaos, irony and humour of the public culture of India.
The street in India is like a visual
text, a random people's art which reflects the aspirations, cinematic
dreams and also comments on current political issues, on history and
mythology in often unlikely combinations. The still camera is the
perfect tool to capture these visual texts and Rahman creates new
stories in his assemblage of images. Some hand painted images, the
proliferating digital imagery, offset posters and signs are all elements
of this pop culture mashup which has survived the sanitising homogeneity
of global consumerism.
Ram
Rahman is a contemporary Indian photographer and curator based in Delhi.
He was born in 1955 to Indrani Rahman, a classical Indian dancer, and
Habib Rahman, a noted Indian architect. Ram Rahman completed his degree
in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also
received a degree in Graphic Design from the Yale University School of
Art in 1979. His most recent shows include at Musée Guimet, Paris,
2022–23; the Chennai Photo Biennale, 2019; Gwangju Biennale, 2018;
Houston FotoFest, 2018; and Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2017.
Amongst
the shows Rahman has curated are Delhi: Building the Modern,
Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, 2017; The Photographic Eye of
Jyoti Bhatt, The Guild, 2016–17; Sunil Janah: Vintage Photographs
1940-1960, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, 2015; Delhi
Modern: The Architectural Photographs of Madan Mahatta, PHOTOINK,
New Delhi, 2012; Heat: Moving Picture Visions, Phantasms and
Nightmares, Bose Pacia, New York, 2003; Sunil Janah Photographs:
A Retrospective, Gallery 678, New York, 1998.
Rahman
has been lecturing on aspects of contemporary Indian photography and
architecture in the last few years, at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City
Museum; Jnanapravaha, Mumbai; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre
Pompidou, Paris, including major lectures on Sunil Janah, Raghubir
Singh, and the modern architecture of New Delhi.
His
publications include Sunil Janah: Photographs 1940–1960 (2014),
The Sahmat Collective: Art and Activism in India since 1989,
co-edited with Jessica Moss (2013), and he has contributed the essay
“Defending Husain in the Public Sphere: The SAHMAT Experience” to
Barefoot across the Nation, MF Husain and the Idea of India (editor
Sumathi Ramaswami, 2010). He is one of the founding members of the
Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT), and co-curated the SAHMAT
retrospective exhibition which opened at SMART Museum, University of
Chicago, in February 2013.
Rahman’s
photographs are in the collections of The Devi Art Foundation, The Kiran
Nadar Museum of Art, in Delhi, The Museum of Modern Art and the MET in
New York, The Pompidou Centre in Paris, and The Tate Modern in London,
besides private collections. Ram Rahman received the prestigious Forbes
India Art Award in the year 2014 for best “exhibition of Indian art
curated on an international stage.” |
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