Mastering the Lens: Before and After Cartier Bresson in Pondicherry
Exhibition of photography
at Galerie Romain Rolland, Alliance Française, New Delhi
from 15th to 30th September 2012

About the exhibition:
The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Martine Franck (1938-2012), photographer and wife of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

This exhibition supported with a publication, in an attempt to trace the development of photography in Pondicherry spanning the late 19th and early 20th Century. Drawn exclusively from the Alkazi Collection of Photography, at the core of this initiative is the un-published album of Cartier-Bresson, founder of Magnum Photos, who visited the Aurobindo Ashram in April 1950. He clicked the last pictures of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh in the company of his spiritual companion, ‘the Mother’. The visual material is further enhanced by some extraordinary images taken by Indian practitioners such as Tara Jauhar and Venkatesh Shirodkar at the Aurobindo Ashram, being showcased for the first time.

The use of digitised antiquarian maps from the 18th and 19th Centuries along with images taken by commercial photographers like Bourne and Shepherd, or indeed a lesser known French photographer C. (possibly Charles) Moyne further add to the visual documentation of the city of Pondicherry.