Inside the metro rail compartments, people hardly get time
to act. They are in their vulnerable best. Before they enter the metro coaches,
while waiting for the trains to come they are almost like trained animals who
are ready to obey the whiplashes of the trainer. Once they are about to get in,
they all lose their control and their primordial animal nature comes out in
full play. Those who want to get in do not mind to squeeze the ones who are
elbowing their best to get out. Trained by daily practice, many know how to get
in and how to get out without getting hurt or without hurting others. But the
novices make all the attempts to create ruckus and many others deliberately do that.
Once they are in, whether they get seats or not, they are a different lot. They
lose their animal nature and become trained human beings. In the circus of
life, they are the willing animals of performance. Human beings generally do
not ‘behave’ inside bathrooms and lavatories. They are simple and natural being
stripped off of all egos. Inside the metro trains too they tend to lose their
ego by entering into a total dialogue with themselves. Sometimes, it is the
same case with those people who are left alone in the platforms, especially in
late or very early hours, waiting for the trains to come.
(Photograph by Manoj Bharti Gupta)
Manoj Bharti Gupta has been recording the people who travel
by metro in Delhi for a long time. His photographs are candid shots of people
who are totally unaware of a photographer amongst them. Each moving person in a
city is a potential camera. He/she has always been like that. Whether he has a
camera with him or not, a person who walks along the streets or travels by a
vehicle doubles himself as a camera recording the visuals and events through his
eyes and storing them into his memory. Today, every human being is a
photographer, willingly or unwillingly. I should say that most of us are
willing photographers when it comes to taking selfies and belfies (selfies of
one’s own butts). Armed with mobile cameras everyone tries to become a photographer
at some stage in their lives. The new motto should be, after Descrates, “I
click therefore I am”. Manoj Bharti Gupta clicks photographs of the metro travelers
in Delhi not because he want to collect the images of interesting people but he
likes to see them being themselves. It could be purely my way of looking at
Manoj Bharti Gupta’s works, but I would like to see them as capturing of images
that are engrossed in their own selves.
(Photograph by Manoj Bharti Gupta)
Out of several bodies of works that Manjo Bharti Gupta has
created out of the metro travelers, I like a particular body works photographs,
aptly titled ‘Women in Metro’. One may suspect him of having some strange sense
of voyeurism. Voyeurism is a curse of the photographers and a good photographer
cannot be born without a heightened sense of voyeurism. However, in a scenario
where we are over burdened by theoretical awareness, voyeurism in and by photography
could be a bad human quality. If the voyeur is a male then he could be treated
as a criminal. Voyeurism becomes severe when it is seen as male gaze. All the
photographs have a voyeuristic aspect in them. But gaze is peculiar to the male
photography that makes the subject’s gaze nullified. Though Manoj Bharti Gupta
takes the pictures of the women metro travelers as immersed in their egoless
states, he does not employ his male gaze. Instead, he uses his lens as a
dispassionate capturing device. He almost lets his eyes go innocent. As an art
viewer and art critic, I fail to see any kind of male gaze in Manoj’s
photographs. They are voyeuristic in a sense that he turns almost existential
and poetic in his frames.
(Photograph by Manoj Bharti Gupta)
I look at those frames/photographs, where women are seen in
different locations of a metro rail. They are inside the compartments or in the
platforms. They are alone or could be in a crowd. They are accompanied by men
at times, and often they are alone. There are women who share light moments
with their spouses or boyfriends. There are women who sit alone and sleep or
brood over something. There are women who listen to music. There are shoppers,
there are wanders, there are nuns, women in military outfits and in their many
guises. I particularly like those images of women who stand alone in lonely
platforms. One of the most sensitive pictures taken by Manoj Bharti Gupta shows
a small girl child standing alone near a metro mascot that prods the parents to
take tickets for their kids who are more than three feet tall. There is another
very sensitive image where he captures a pair of beautifully manicured and
booted female legs. The most interesting pictures are those show women alone in
the platforms; I can’t help if I am repeating it. They, surprisingly, in Manoj’s
views do not look vulnerable. They are ready to face the world ‘all alone’.
(Photograph by Manoj Bharti Gupta)
Aditya Dhawan is one of the photography artists in Delhi who
keeps a consistent interest in photographing people inside the metro trains.
His pictures show the social contrasts and social contracts. But Manoj’s
pictures have sheer documentary quality, without leaning towards any kind of
ideology. He does not make any value judgment of women or their contexts in his
pictures. Manoj Bharti Gupta takes a lot of interest in the human ‘aloneness’,
which is unique and lonely at the same time. Before closing this short note
appreciation, I should say, I have not yet seen Manoj in person though both of
us live in Delhi.
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