It’s Vintage

The United Art Fair connects collectors and artists,by doing away with middlemen. In its second edition that opens today,apart from fine art,on display is India of the past and present,through the photographers lens. The highlight will be archival monochromes of prominent faces that ruled the previous decades. By Vandana Kalra

Jethalal H Thakker

Photoshop was still to enter the lives of film stars back then. If the Bollywood frat needed to be photographed then their cars had to roll into Dadar,to India Photo Studio. Established by Jethalal H Thakker in 1948,he was known for his chiaroscurist lighting. His own legacy led Madhuri Dixit to approach him for a photo shoot almost two decades after Thakker quit the business.While a young and slender Meena Kumari stares into the camera with a scarf around her head,with a long coat over his shoulder is a lean Raj Kumar.

OP Sharma

He started his photo journey with a camera gifted by his grandmother. OP Sharma was training to be a painter when the photography bug bit him. Passion to pursue the craft led him from Lucknow to Delhi,where he found a job at Modern Public School,and subsequently became the head of the photography department at Triveni Kala Sangam. Practitioner of the pictorialist school,UAF will have some of his early studio portraits. Among others,is left-wing intellectual and revolutionary poet

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Faiz Ahmed Faiz deep in thought; and Shammi Kapoor in a Kashmiri cap with beads hanging down

his neck.

Ram Dhamija

An India in transition surfaces in the frames of Ram Dhamija. Writer and photojournalist from the 40s to the 80s,when the newly independent nation was finding its own path,Dhamija travelled the length and breadth of the country,from Rajasthan to Kashmir,and Ladakh to Bengal. In his images we see the grim and the gloom from architect Le Corbusier at a construction site in Chandigarh in the 50s to a soldier in Ladakh in 1962 during the India-China war. MF Hussain paints at Naaz hotel overlooking Jama Masjid in the 70s and Kathak danseuse Kumudini Lakhia strikes a pose in Delhi in the 60s.

Tina Modotti

These photographs are a result of the association between a young Italian actress and an Indian revolutionary and agronomist. Tina Modotti met Pandurang Khankhoje in Mexico,in the 20s,when the latter was developing new varieties of maize. She photographed the research which included ears of corn,peasants in Chapingo,and Khankhoje in the fields. With few prints still intact,this is a rare collection.

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