At the heart of Spanish Nobel Prize winner and acclaimed poet Juan Ramón Jiménez’s lyrical book, Platero and I, is an unexplainable love between a human and an animal. The book is a collection of short traveller’s tales – of a man and his donkey through southern Spain. The idyllic landscape of Andalusia makes its way into Jiménez’s prose like poetry.
Celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Platero and I, the Instituto Cervantes in New Delhi commissioned a photo exhibition as part of its Photo-poetry series, which began in 2014. Bearing the same title as the book, photographer Anurag Banerjee was asked to interpret Jiménez’s text as photographs, and the exhibition of these images opened in Delhi on June 24.
For Jesús Clavero Rodríguez, cultural manager at the Cervantes Institute, Jiménez’s inspiring book was perfect for the latest Photo-poetry edition. “Two main composers for the guitar, Eduardo Sainz de la Maza from Spain and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco from Italy, created two suites for the guitar on this text,” he said. Jiménez was also the first (along with his wife Zenobia Camprubí) to translate Rabindranath Tagore’s works to Spanish.
Back in Mumbai, photographer Anurag Banerjee’s Instagram account was gaining momentum owing to his photographs of Snowy (his dog) in his hometown Shillong. Many strangers even sent him messages saying how much they loved the posts. “I realised that when it comes to love for an animal, affection is beyond boundaries of familiarity,” said Banerjee. This feeling resonated with him while reading Platero and I, before he started photographing for the exhibition.
Banerjee was well aware of the previous editions of Photo-poetry, where photographers had created works based on poems written by Octavio Paz, Nicanor Parra and Teresa of Ávila. Platero and I struck him as immensely moving and much like a dialogue between himself and Snowy. “It only seemed natural that Snowy be at the heart of this exhibition and that the photographs be made in Shillong, not Mumbai,” said Banerjee.
“He is so much like me that I have come to believe he dreams my own dreams,” writes Jiménez of Platero, the donkey in the book.
This is one of the key sentences that Rodríguez believes as the link between the text and Banerjee’s photographs.
Right from when the book begins, one is aware of the love between the man and Platero. One also knows that in the end, there will be pain and separation. But everything else in the middle is a dazzling account of Andalusia and its natural landscape, told in short chapters. It is obvious that Banerjee’s photographs stayed very close to the original text, interpreting it literally, but not without touches of charm.
For instance, in the book, Jiménez writes of a stormy night in September, likening it to a “sick heart, pouring down rain and hail between the insistent desperation of lightning and thunder.” Banerjee translates this exactly in his photograph, A warm welcome, where this skeleton-like hand of lighting strikes above an electric pole in the night in Shillong.
Jiménez wrote of Platero like a friend to the man, not his pet or animal and later in the book, he even talks of Platero being his best male friend. During an outing, the man is asked by someone, “The donkey cannot get in, sir,” to which he replies, “The donkey? What donkey?” This love that doesn’t differentiate between human and animal is what Banerjee also depicts in his photographs of Snowy, especially the one where Snowy is seen lounging on a blue carpet, at the feet of Banerjee’s mother. The photograph, without revealing either of their faces hints at the intimacy of the bond between the two and their equal right of place.
The wonderful complexities in the book though seem to have been kept at bay in the exhibition, such as Jiménez’s lament at mines polluting the rivers in Andalusia. Many thought of the book as a children’s book, but it was far from being just that. It is a personal and social commentary on simple, rural life and its concerns as the world around Platero changes.
Banerjee’s longing for his hometown, Shillong, comes out strongly in the photographs, and that can be thought of as a major outcome of how he interpreted Jiménez’s book. Perhaps, there also is the human fear of eventually losing his sole companion (while being away) that makes Banerjee centre his work around Snowy. For as joyous as Snowy basking in the golden light of the hills might be, all it takes is Jiménez’s heartbreaking description of Platero’s curly hair – now fallen at a single touch, like delicate dust, to feel the heaviness of a pending despair.
Paroma Mukherjee is an independent photographer and writer in New Delhi.
