December 9: Fifty, that magical figure which tracked us through all of 1997 was the theme of yet another exhibition. This time, `India: A Celebration of Independence, 1947-1997', an exhibit of photographs at the National Gallery of Modern Art showcased an India seen through varying lenses and visions, both Indian and foreign.

Organised by the Alfred Stieglitz Center of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this travelling exhibition boasts of reputed names like Sunil Janah, Raghu Rai, Steve McCurry, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Sebastino Salgado, to name but a few. Several of the younger generation like Dayanita Singh, Swapan Parekh, Pamela Singh, Alex Webb and Ketaki Sheth are also being featured. Michale E Hoffman, the museum's Adjunct Curator of Photographs, selected the 250-odd images.

Said Sarayu Doshi of the National Gallery, ``India at this time is passing through a struggle which attempts to reconcile deep and abiding cultural traditions with new ideas and modern technology. The resulting dysjuncture forms the subject of many of the photographs here. Each image represents a moment in the life of a country, and are glimpses of a rapidly evolving civilisation whose conflicts and complexities are expressed in its diversity and cultural unity.''

Some of the earliest images to hit the eye are those of Sunil Janah, who started photographing in the early 1940s while writing for leftwing newspapers. Janah clicks Mahatma Gandhi addressing a prayer meet, with a close-up shot so fine you can count almost every single line on the Mahatma's face.

And legend Henri Cartier-Bresson's powerful images of a peace procession of Hindu and Muslims, refugee camps after Partition, Gandhi's funeral, and Jawaharlal Nehru sharing a joke with the Mountbattens on the steps of the Government House trap an Indai at one of its most crucial junctures. Steve McCurry of the National Geographic juxtaposes the new and old, epitomised by a big black steam engine spewing clouds of steam and black smoke as it pulls out in front of the Taj Mahal.

Mumbai, rather Bombay, is seen through the lens of Mary Ellen Mark's `Street Acrobatics' in 1981, Sebastiao Salgado's pictures of a humming Churchgate station, Sassoon Docks, Dhobighat and Crawford market in 1995. And Ketaki Sheth's clicks India's dream factory, Bollywood, with Shatrugan Sinha learning his lines for a shoot.There's also a more familiar, perhaps a not-yet-camera-savvy India, seen in images of Holi or burkha-clad women at a mosque, a road-side restaurant in Himachal Pradesh or Calcutta. This is an India which reveals a land in its ordinariness and humanness, rather than the more archetypal images of snakes, tigers or the semi-clad poverty stricken Indians.

The show now travels to Calcutta and Chennai. An identical exhibition which opened in Philadelphia will also travel to selected American cities and the Royal Festival Hall, London.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.