Pablo Bartholomew excavates atmospheric photos of 1970s Kolkata
Photographer Pablo Bartholomew's photographic tribute to his grandmother, the fast- disappearing Chinese community and the streets of Kolkata.
Pablo Bartholomew has taken hundreds of thousands of images over his long career, but he's best recognised as the photographer who captured the chilling image of a half-buried body of a child victim of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.
Born in 1955 in New Delhi, Bartholomew learnt his craft from his father, Richard Bartholomew. At 19, Pablo Bartholomew received the World Press Photo Award for his series on India's morphine addicts.
While working with Satyaji Ray as a still photographer on the sets of the film Shatranj ke Khiladi in Kolkata in the late 1970s, Bartholomew re-engaged with the city that he visited as a child. "It was stifling on the studio sets - film shootings had that effect on me," he recalled. "On the other hand it was therapeutic to get away and wander the streets, to feed the inner churning. It was a way of dealing with my own sense of being of mixed origin and of being marginal."
His latest exhibition of photographs entitled The Calcutta Diaries pays homage to the city and its communities as he saw them circa 1978. Here are some photographs from the show, which is underway in Mumbai.
The Calcutta Diaries can be viewed at Mumbai's Sakshi Gallery until May 2.
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Born in 1955 in New Delhi, Bartholomew learnt his craft from his father, Richard Bartholomew. At 19, Pablo Bartholomew received the World Press Photo Award for his series on India's morphine addicts.
While working with Satyaji Ray as a still photographer on the sets of the film Shatranj ke Khiladi in Kolkata in the late 1970s, Bartholomew re-engaged with the city that he visited as a child. "It was stifling on the studio sets - film shootings had that effect on me," he recalled. "On the other hand it was therapeutic to get away and wander the streets, to feed the inner churning. It was a way of dealing with my own sense of being of mixed origin and of being marginal."
His latest exhibition of photographs entitled The Calcutta Diaries pays homage to the city and its communities as he saw them circa 1978. Here are some photographs from the show, which is underway in Mumbai.
Pablo Bartholomew's grandmother, Kolkata.
A dilapidated building on BBG Street.
Looking out from a tannery home, Tangra.
Workers taking a break, Tangra.
A dead cow being taken on a handcart to a tannery.
The Calcutta Diaries can be viewed at Mumbai's Sakshi Gallery until May 2.
