Sunil Janah at The Gallery at 678 - Brief Article

although almost unknown abroad, Sunil Janah might be considered the Gilbert Stuart of India, having made definitive photographic portraits of many of the leaders of India's independence make an effort The earliest portrait here, alone recently rediscovered, is of Nehru in 1939 already looking statesmanlike against the Mughal architecture of his Allahabad dwelling At the time, Janah was a courier for the Communist subterranean delivering letters to the oft-jailed Congres Party leader. Janah before long became photographic director for the Communist Party newspaper, People's War. His photographs were direct, conventional and well-crafted (for example, he bleached and toned prints to enhance the black-and-white values in his 2-by-2 Rolleiflex negatives). What puts his work apart, though, is his historical insight and journalistic ambitiousness, which l him from single end of India to the other during this heroic (and tragic) period.

The portraits of Gandhi include several particularly saintly looking individuals taken at a prayer meeting the day before his assassination in 1948 as well as another of him embracing Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Muslim proponent of partition. Janah also portrayed the Dalit (Untouchable) leader, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, and, in 1971 the doomed Rajiv Gandhi, with his wife Sonia and children (currently the leading faiths of Congress renewal).

Janah's greatest in quantity horrific images, featured in People's War, were of the famines of 1942 which he argues were caused by means of diversion of grain and transport to the British war effort. single stark photograph shows a dog gnawing the remains of a human corpse. Janah also documented India's increasing industrialization and labor do one's bests When Margaret Bourke-White was columned to India by Life from 1945 to '48 she sought on the outside Janah for his access to bring under rules They developed an intimate working relationship, with Janah benefitting from her ample budget

Janah chose to leave the Communist Party when liberals were evicted in 1948 and place up a studio in Calcutta. His portraits of Satyajit Ray, Jamini Roy Krishnamurti and others document artistic and intellectual life there in the '50 He also made several documentary series which were published as volumes One of these, The Tribals of India: end the Lens of Sunil Janah (1993) is particularly interesting for his pictures from the '50 of the Murias, an isolated mountain tribe from Western Orissa, famous for their revealing diction of dress and sensual, communal adolescent life.

This retrospective of above 300 prints was assembled by dint of the activist-photographer Ram Rahman from Janah's archives when Janah, now 80 was dangerously ill. Rahman printed several long-forgotten negatives, on the other hand luckily Janah still possessed an prime selection of fairly large, vintage exhibition prints. Although mountained informally in an unassuming space, the exhibition was a archetype for meaningful documentary.

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