Design artist-photographer Sameer Tawde cracks visual puns around his home city’s geography in a new exhibition at Hsinchu
Puri Truth: Photographer Sameer Tawde captures an indolent hour on a Mumbai beach from amidst a paani puri stack
The Bandra-Worli Sea Link comes alive in an unfamiliar light in Sameer Tawde’s camerawork. Foregrounded by a bunch of white balloon strings, the cable-stayed structure appears surreal—looking majestic and toy-like at the same time, because it is positioned against commonplace threads of a balloon seller.
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The image is part of an exhibition titled Constructed Realities to be inaugurated on August 17 at Uniquephoto Gallery, Taiwan. Due to COVID-19-related restrictions worldwide, Tawde won’t be accompanying his frames, like he did for his solo show in 2018 in the same gallery, which is devoted to photography. Earlier, he displayed another defining sea link image in which the cabled wires contrasted against dangling nimbu-mirchi good luck threads.
Istri Mounts: Tawde vertically positions steel press iron bases at an angle that makes the mundane triangular istris look like a mountain range
The sea link diptych is part of his ongoing series Dialogues of an Introvert—imagined, constructed and shot in Mumbai and its outskirts before the March 2020 lockdown. Tawde chose sundry locations—Madh Island, Wadala, a swimming pool in far-off Dahanu—that allowed laborious recces and early-hour shooting. Alongside photography, Tawde’s practice embraces installations, life-size props, miniature sets, video and sculpture. In this series, one can see the floats and plastic creations as part of the pre-stage; he will add to the series in the coming months as things open up in post-pandemic Mumbai. The images will segue to his book on the “illusions” created over the years.
“The quest for contrast is always on, and not necessarily directed at an exhibition. I express my views on a variety of issues like environment, urban planning, civic life, in a design vocabulary which rests on the ‘created’ image,” he says, adding that once a design comes together in his mind, the location logistics becomes
easier, especially in Mumbai, which lends itself to linear and lateral adjustments.
Tawde’s images form part of an exhibition titled Constructed Realities in Hsinchu
In Tawde’s scheme of things, props are open to interpretation, much like the discarded packaging material from Dharavi used in the Holy Boulevard, which was on display last month at Toschi Arredamenti, Italy. There is no stated context to the blue waters on which he places the pyramidal plastic structures; but one can get a sense of the contaminated seabed that he references. Similarly, the glass bottle floats and a jumbo-sized spinning top evoke churning of water-land resources. In some of his earlier images on Mumbai life, the mood of the moment is clear—an indolent hour on a beach caught from amidst a paani puri stack. The puris look sufficiently epic.
In the soon-to-be-inaugurated show in Hsinchu, Tawde vertically positions steel press iron bases at an angle that makes the mundane triangular istris look like a mountain range. The iron bases also resemble wooden vessels docked in alignment, back-dropped by a setting sun. This work, shot at a Vasai beach, was shortlisted in the top 10 entries for the Emerging Photographer Award at Photo London 2020.
They reveal his efforts to transcend the geography in which he shoots
Tawde’s images are his worldviews, musings, and efforts to transcend the geography in which he shoots. They go beyond the subject and are perceived in an individual and personal light. For instance, this columnist was transported to the Bapu Kuti in Wardha by his “constructed” image of large-size specs with barbed wires. For me, the round-framed glasses are symbolic of those worn by the Father of the Nation, and the barbs stand for a collective Indian failure to appreciate his unifying worldview.
The visual grammar of the image evoked altogether dissimilar responses on social media—some interpreted it as a picture of a blinkered caustic mind, and some treated it as a metaphor for violation of a basic right to discretion. It travelled to the Backlight Photo Festival, Finland, as well as the photo fair in Shanghai, and the Singapore International Photo Festival, all three inclusions in the momentous COVID-impacted year.
Design artist-photographer Sameer Tawde
The 1978-born artist says the cultural background of the viewer determines his or her reception of reality. Just as the nimbu-mirchi totka is an accepted endearing superstition in India (as played up in the sea link image), it needs explanation in the Western world. In yet another project titled Miracle Robots, shaped in collaboration with French anthropologist Emmanuel Grimaud, Tawde documented the world of Indian Automata, mostly through the lens of Mumbai’s Ganesh festivity. Urban Indians reacted differently to the placement of the mythical oversized idols amid modern milieus.
Tawde’s images rest on design elements, but also on vistas. He appreciated large panoramas since the time he took to architecture in Mumbai’s LS Raheja College (2001) and later completed his post-graduation from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.
Even before formal education, his fixation with malleable spaces began in his childhood years in Ghatkopar, marked by 1BHK constraints. He became alert to the possibilities in the interior as well as the exterior, more so after he started trotting over the globe, either for exhibitions or for art residency programmes like the one at Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (2013), where he juxtaposed the Japanese automata with the Indian ones.
For him, the world’s vastness wasn’t just about serene landscapes or awe-evoking constructions. “My eyes and camera play with angles/tilts and objects that tell a story. I don’t want to necessarily mock at the times in which we live, neither is mine a solemn remark.”
Tawde’s fun with ordinary objects—a podium, a microphone, bottles, balloons, a carpet or a mesh of overhead electric wires—makes us relook at our city’s transformational power. He shoots the magic in everyday spaces.
Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre is a culture columnist in search of the sub-text. You can reach her at sumedha.raikar@mid-day.com
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