In Person: O.P. Sharma and the Fine Art of Photography with Sukanya Baskar

Currently on view at Shridharani Gallery, Triveni Kala Sangam in New Delhi, O.P. Sharma and the Fine Art of Photography (1950s-1990s) is a tribute to the modern master of analogue photography in the subcontinent. Curated by Sukanya Baskar in collaboration with Rahaab Allana, and with creative support by Aseem Sharma, the exhibition is a preliminary excavation of O.P. Sharma’s cosmopolitan oeuvre. This ranges from avant-garde aesthetics and early experiments in Pictorialism to 1970s commercial Hindi cinema, and portraits of stalwarts of Hindustani classical music as well as Hindi and Urdu poets. Through a presentation of 150 vintage prints—on view for the first time—that were produced in one of Delhi’s earliest post-independence darkrooms at the Modern School, Barakhamba, and later at the Triveni Kala Sangam, the exhibition is as much a document of an artist’s legacy as it is of a forgotten photographic history of analogue printmaking and the development of photo clubs and salons in India. It is also a story of camaraderie, most evident in the journey Sharma shared with his late wife, the artist-photographer Chitrangada Sharma.

The exhibition asks: What is the relation between art and photography, and what does it mean to make a photograph rather than take one? In what ways does a new nation create the conditions for, and is itself created by new photographic experimentation in the whimsical and the optimistic? In what ways do the intimacies of intellectual collaborations and friendships tell the story of a city suspended in the fraught space between Partition and independence, and how do they shape its cultural landscape? How do we write the institutional history of photographic practice in India through the lens of an artist? What is the role of the pedagogue in building infrastructures of education while never themselves ceasing to learn? By highlighting Sharma’s role in having 19th August declared as World Photography Day since 1991, the exhibition unveils only one of the many ways that regional histories within India’s diverse photographic landscape contributed to world photography.

In this episode of In Person, Sukanya Baskar walks us through the exhibition, introducing the viewer to four decades of O.P. Sharma’s photographic practice and the different ways in which his work was crucial for the development of a culture of photography in post-independent India. 

The exhibition is on view till 3 October 2024 at the Shridharani Gallery, Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi.
Artworks for this exhibition have been loaned from the O.P. Sharma personal collection. The exhibition is presented by the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts and Art Heritage. 

(Featured image: "How I Look” 1985, Silver gelatin print, combined photogram, 13.43 x 18.94 inches, O.P. Sharma Collection.)

In case you missed the previous episodes of In Person, watch Sabih Ahmed’s walkthrough of Sheher, Prakriti, Devi (2024) at the Ishara Art Foundation, walkthroughs of The Nights Will Follow the Days with Shalmali Shetty and HOLY FLUX! with members of The Packet at the Serendipity Arts Festival 2023 as well as conversations with Shahrukhkhan Chavada and Wafa Refai on their film Kayo Kayo Colour? (2023) and Clara Kroft Isono about her film Bawa’s Garden (2022) at the Dharamshala International Film Festival 2023.