Famous People, Infamous Shots

India is the subject of Lord Snowdon’s latest exhibition. But go back in time to see his finest work yet.

It would be unforgivable, if not border-line blasphemous, to not swoon over Lord Snowdon’s pictures. Still, more unforgivable if it’s an exhibition about India. Thankfully, these are godless times we live in. Lord Snowdon, for the uninitiated, has often enough been heralded as one of the finest and most prominent photographers of our times—his images have a quiet elegance, a comfort between the subject and the photographer, and a sense of serenity that’s since been lost to Photoshop computer software.

Snowdon in India is an exhibition and book featuring portraits of prominent post-Independence Indians and features everyone from Mani Shankar Aiyer and E Sreedharan to Vir Sanghvi, George Fernandes, Naseeruddin Shah, Kamal Haasan and Anand Mahindra, to name just a few. Devika Daulet-Singh, the project director, fondly recalls the shoot with George Fernandes, one that was wrapped up in exactly 15 minutes and three frames and features the leader sleeping on a bed, half of it occupied with stacks of newspapers and ilk, his dog asleep by the side of the bed—a testimony to how Lord Snowdon works. “George Sahab had been travelling and asked if he could catch a couple of winks while the set-up was happening. We got exactly three frames and Lord Snowdon said he got his picture,” she smiles.

Another one is of Naseeruddin Shah, shot in the tiny balcony of his son’s apartment with the words ‘Pull Brother’ emblazoned on the wall in paint. “There was just enough space for him to sit and Lord Snowdon’s wheelchair to be placed in front of him,” Singh says.

On a table in the gallery sits an opened copy of Photographs by Snowdon: A Retrospective, and suddenly it begins to sink in—the pictures on the wall may be fine specimens, but the ones in the book are flawless. There are shots of Charlie Chaplin during a lunch in Switzerland, a naked Damien Hirst in a fish tank, a naked Emma Thomson looking into a mirror, David Bowie perched on a pedestal in a garden, there’s Lady Diana looking up in boyish beauty. After these, the photographs exhibited on the walls of the gallery seem, well, ordinary.

Lord Snowdon, though, is far less charitable about his early work. He turns the pages of the book, dismissing a picture of a bare-bodied Gent, an aesthetically-placed mannequin on the side, as too camp. He stops at a picture of Lady Diana holding the baby Prince Harry in her arms. He’s not happy with the picture, and politely asks for another glass of wine even as he wonders if the picture isn’t blurry. You were trying to focus on Prince Harry, his assistant Dylan reminds him. He moves on, to a corset-clad buxom Helen Mirren looking into a showgirl mirror (he recalls her being very fond of her assets). Next comes a photo of Lady Diana, Prince Charles and Princes William and Harry at a picnic. Snowdon points out the table he took with him from London for the shoot, and dismisses the picture. Later, he does what would make many of us wince—he dismisses an image of Uma Thurman sprawled on a sofa as ‘boring’. He certainly isn’t his own best fan.

On the jacket of his book, he writes: ‘I believe that photographs should be simple technically, and easy to look at. They shouldn’t be directed at other photographers; their point is to make ordinary people react—to laugh, or to see something they hadn’t taken in before, or to be touched. But not to wince.’ Tragically, some of the pictures in this exhibition don’t do much. Those in the book, though, would make you fall in love over and over and over again.

Snowdon in India, an exhibition supported by The Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, will run from 12 Dec to 30 Jan at PhotoInk MGF Hyundai Building, Ground Floor Jhandewalan, New Delhi

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