By Team Mojarto
There is mature essence to the way the color ‘brown’ catches the eye as it’s splattered all over one’s environment. For me, it resonates with the color of the Earth, hard work and labour and artists and photographers alike would agree on how audacious the color seems on the canvas or in print.
A lot can be said about any color but something about brown seems as if it’s doused in antiquity, it’s been through a lot of shaping and reshaping and rugged scrutiny and criticism. From the bark of a tree to the deeper layers of the Earth, the ethereal presence of this color remains, like a silent observer, a flaneur of sorts.
1. Ancient Doors by Kaushik Modi
The artist, Kaushik Modi is a photographer by profession and doors occupy a significant place in his collection of artworks. It is said that every door has a story to tell and similarly this is a photograph of an ancient brown door from Rajasthan.
2. Composition By Subhajit Dutta
A good photography acumen is carried with the photographer’s vision, and staging. And the technicalities aside, Subhajit Dutta portrays the schism between darkness and light, the balance within it. Not a lot of light passes through the door which is left ajar, but enough to nourish the plant and one understands the value of the bare essentials of life.
The brick wall (which is also motif for brown) seems like it towers over the house, like a cruel guardian and doesn’t allow much to enter let alone sunlight. The story Dutta narrates is one of impeccable lighting, and a decent photographer knows how lucky one has to be to attain it, to accomplish snaps of such perfection.
3. Window 1 By Sayali
Flowers make everything look good. Ask Monet, in the afterlife and you’ll get your answers. And Sayali’s vision isn’t just limited to the floral aesthetics. The brown brick wall, it’s smudged and ragged surface with no hope for another paint job and the windows just asking for a cleaning but beyond the imperfections here, we notice one humane thing in particular.
It’s the nurturing, the care for the flowers which are still in full bloom and in their pots. We automatically picture this nagging yet sweet old lady, living alone in that apartment. Some things are just captured, and narratives and stories just flow like a river full of running. Sayali accomplishes more than that here and we’re sold.
4. Inside from Outside By Asis Kumar Sanyal
An office space, a cluttered desk through a foggy window (the fog and the brown colour always adding to the gathered aesthetics) is captured through the lens of Sanyal, bringing an impressionistic touch to the fray. Two perspectives lie here, and there’s always this need to know how the inside would be seen from the outside but ironically, the photographer keeps us in a translucent state of knowing.
It’s as if both worlds have infused into one, hence it is inside from the outside, as the artist rightfully names it. A wintry scene, which is always greatly received as it makes the subjects seem clearer, but the fog allows us to gather a context and take a whiff out of the atmosphere created by Sanyal.
5. Rajasthani Door By Uday Tadphale
A lot of history can be told and retold with architecture, the way buildings, gates, temples, pillars and bridges are made. These stories are supplemented by the efforts of all the brick masons and fine craftsmen who laboured for hours at end to create marvels. One such story is being told in Tadphale’s Rajasthani door, a traditional gateway to a probable Marwari extended family with a manual doorbell, a sheen brown that is rugged enough to tell you how old and decorated the door is, the events it has witnessed and the number of times it has been opened and closed, no matter how trivial it seems. Beyond the photograph and its excellent staging, the door tells a story worth telling.