The lights are off. A lone statue occupies the carpeted stage. An empty chair seeks an occupant. There would have been a crowd aspiring for a seat a while ago. Perhaps many more statues and chairs in the vicinity too. But Dhruv Malhotra was not interested in the festivities. The photographer wanted to focus, instead, on its remains. “I wasn’t seeking solace in these spaces but looking at the aftermath in spaces that disappear faster than the time taken for their construction. I photographed empty spaces constructed for events such as weddings, banquets, prayer meetings, conferences and public performances, which are assembled and dismantled within a day or two of the event. There is something about that which remains from these events that speaks to me about us as a society and culture,” says Malhotra. He has traced the path of this prowl in the exhibition aptly titled “After Party”. On at Photoink gallery in Delhi, the photographs present scenes from the celebration after the revelry. If one frame has metal fans lined together to be transported, in another, canopies are in the midst of being brought down and there are other frames with dismantled sets that would have been grandiose hours before. The gods too are looking. Deities do not occupy center stage, but a place next to a row of empty plastic chairs and a ladder arranged horizontally. While the location remains discreet, occasional clues are suggestive of a sports complex, club, residential area and so on. Malhotra, however, refuses to share details. “When we look at images which do not have any kind of location or caption information, it amplifies our visual experience of the images. It also makes one come up with one’s own interpretations to absorb and understand the context, signage and other specifics,” says the 32-year-old graduate in Economics who works with a medium format film camera often placed on a tripod, with exposure time ranging from 10 minutes to two hours. “This allows me to register all the available light onto the film and make images that don’t seem dark,” he adds. With this series, the Jaipur-based photographer completes his trilogy focusing on the dark. The quest began with “Noida Soliloquy" (2010) chronicling the changing topography of Noida, followed by “Sleepers” (2013) that had people sleeping in public spaces across India. With “After Party” too he unravels what is ordinarily concealed in the shroud of darkness. There is Noida, Jaipur, Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Goa and Ahmedabad, none ostensible. What is important is not the nature of the event itself, but the space and the incarnation that it was in. The exhibition at Photoink is on till September 15. vandana.kalra@expressindia.com
