Marketplaces of Bangalore through Alip's eyes

Alip was in Bangalore for an assignment and both of us spent half of a day roaming around different market-places of the city and I shared a few images from our stock.

PIX O’ Subaltern

Life flows in front of us like a spectator viewing a kaleidoscope, every moment life enthralls with images from its eternal repertoire, as if never seen before. In this eternal interplay of time and life, photos are like snatching a memorable moment from flowing time and keeping it forever! And to talk about life, life is not all about the concrete jungle and created reality of commodities or suave urbane- life is what flows away from the limelight, away from all focus and publicity of Page-3 or media gizmo. This is the life, which flows silently on the footpaths of skyscrapers, where abundance above never looks down to scarcity below, or to those “actual” life close to mother nature in some unknown, uncared village of Jharkhand, Murshidabad or Midnapur , where accessories of life have not shrouded life itself—I call them my “subaltern”—out of my kaleidoscope of life and my efforts to steal a memorable moment from time—I have chosen them.
I don’t call them villagers, folks, aboriginals or tribes-to me these terms are snobbery of those “plastic” urbane, the so called civilized. It is to me the same distinction that First World and Third World terms denote…a naked display of discrimination and power semantics. I was strongly impressed by Mahasweta Devi and Gayatri Spevak Chakraborty when they used “subaltern” in their literature in describing those less-privileged whose life still rotate around nature. This is precisely the reason when technology endowed me with such a tool called camera—I thought of exploring my “subalterns” going to villages of West Bengal and Jharkhand and many other places not leaving apart the footpaths and shanties of urban surroundings, where dire poverty never overwhelmed humanity, as a spectator as I see life through my camera, the gay moments sparkle out of gory—my kaleidoscope every time brings out a new scene-a new lesson of the sublime ethos-“the subalterns”.
I have tried to present some of those memorable sojourn in this website, my projects and my concept where the sublime ethos of every work is as I described above, and to add more it is about Post modernism-where gradation of plurality is void construct—it is all about plurality per se, several standards—not “The Standard”.
I may therefore conclude this brief introduction with a humble request that view the photos not just random moments from repertoire of life, or folk life but a string of thoughts depicted through images culminating to a philosophy-“The subaltern”—a “realistic reality”, coarse and uncut; never a well groomed suave “plastic reality”.

By Krishnanjan Bhattacharjee, Email: krishnanjan@gmail.com

Please visit http://www.pixosubaltern.com

About Frames

In today’s world of Media, the demand is “effective communication of ideas”. Based on this idea, we started Frames. It is a group of individuals comprises Still Photographers, Short Filmmakers and Graphic Designers. Based on assignments, we form a team with internal and external consultants and work. We have worked for several prestigious organizations and individuals.

Contact::
Alip Kundu | e-mail: alipkundu@gmail.com, alip@pixosubaltern.com| telephone: +91 9830150193
Amitava Guha | e-mail: amitava.guha@aol.in, amitava.guha@gmail.com | telephone: +91 9886423884