VA Gallery, Chennai hosts: A Moment in Time, featuring four photographers

Focusing on special events and memories from each of their lives, four photographers come together for this upcoming exhibit at VA Gallery

An image from ‘Mrs Banoo Pestonji’s Collection of Fascinating Postage Stamps’ by Ami Gupta

You can live a whole life in a moment. That’s what a lot of love songs tell us and nobody can deny that there is some truth in that. It’s therefore no surprise that art curators Varuna Arvind and Upasana Asrani zeroed in on a theme like A Moment in Time for their upcoming photography exhibition at VA Gallery in Kotturpuram. “Upasana and I are both lovers of photography. So, when she suggested we hold this exhibition, I was more than happy to collaborate,” explains Varuna Arvind who owns and runs VA Gallery. The exhibition features four young photographers and each of the collections are, “evocative of each of the photographer’s personal narratives, of what this theme means to them,” Upasana explains.

Varuna Arvind & Upasana Asrani

The four photographers in the spotlight:

Praneeth Reddy | Chennai
Known for his black and white portraits, Praneeth presents a personal collection of images from recent moments of isolation. “A few years ago, I shot some images in monochrome that resonated well with the way my life was then. There were no intrusions — just light, shadows, and I. I could see more clearly in black and white. My only solace was my camera. Every now and then, I’d have a friend over and we’d create these images in a space that was hardly 60 sq ft in the corner of my room. These collections of images are special to me and have been instrumental in transforming me, my outlook on life and my visual aesthetic,” Praneeth shares.

Rakshita Arvind | Chennai
Rakshita uses a wide range of media such as print, graphic design, sound and moving image and presents a series on windowscapes. “As a photographer, I am deeply interested in the process of observation and flâneurism; to me, this is an intuitive process of capturing circumstances as they are found in that moment in time. The series displayed in this exhibit is an excerpt from my observational series of 35mm film photographs that specifically focus on windowscapes. Windows have the ability to frame and reflect a continuous record of their surroundings. They encapsulate the multiplicity that the inside, outside and liminal worlds occupy within every nanosecond. The photographs here serve as an irreplicable documentation of that multiplicity; resulting in abstract, textured and layered imagery,” she shares, describing her collection.

Praneeth Reddy & Rakshita Arvind

Ami Gupta | Chennai
Having showcased at Art Chennai, the Angkor Photo Festival, Focus Photography Festival, Mumbai and Magnet Galleries, Melbourne, here Ami presents Mrs Banoo Pestonji’s Collection of Fascinating Postage Stamps. “There were several moments that flashed in my mind as I went through the contents of a particular small and rusty, green tin trunk: The moment old Mr Pestonji gifted his late wife’s trunk to my father and the moment when my father handed over the trunk to me. It took me more than 30 years to take a proper look into it, and when I finally did, that was another great moment. Apart from her eclectic postage stamp collection, each item from Mrs Banoo Pestonji’s green tin trunk triggered my imagination… I photographed them, over and over again, to document and share their raw beauty, the history and geography they were a part of. Each one has a story of its own, and some have travelled across continents carrying stories with them,” she says describing the collection of images.

Nirali Datta | Mumbai
A commercial photographer who has shot with some illustrious names in film, fashion and architecture; Nirali is presenting a collection of seascapes. “Photography was handed down to me as a legacy by my grandfather. I grew up experimenting with how best to shoot his footprints in the sand and in the process found my calling… making photographs. The magic of the mundane, a simple day on a construction site, the myriad moods of an ever changing sky, seascapes that permeate the senses are ‘moments in time’ that stand out in my personal perspective,” she shares, as she talks to us about her collection.