(Top) Bhatt takes a look at his works at the Gallery Rasa display (Picture by Pradip Sanyal); (middle) Meena Girl Rajasthan (1989); (above) Modelling (1976)

Jyoti Bhatt’s photographs tell stories about their subjects. They also archive the history of folk art in India, which is fast disappearing. Bhatt’s work captures traditional arts in their natural surroundings, fusing technology, art forms and academic documenting. His photographs, which are part commentary, part observation and a product of his personal expression, are a careful record of history over the past five decades that captures striking images of people and the spaces they inhabit. t2 in conversation with the artist in town for a retrospective at Gallery Rasa till March 30...

Photography and painting come together in your work to showcase folk art. How does this happen?

It is merely different tools in these media that ultimately work towards the same end. When you document something, it often tends to be rigid and academic and shows an object without relation to its environment. Out of the 1,000 photographs that I took of the same bangle or motif in folk art, it was perhaps one or two that told a story. These were the photographs that I would take as representative of my sensibility as well as that of the folk artist.

How did you choose folk art as the subject of a large part of your work?

There was a seminar in Gujarat in 1967 on the state’s folklore that discussed the oral tradition. It was then that I realised that this same culture also had an extremely visual angle and all the stories were interrelated with the art produced by the artists and their way of life. I realised that many things that I had seen as a child were no longer around. I wanted to photograph such things, to preserve all that remained. Two of my friends and I took off to travel around the country and record all these aspects of our heritage.

Tell us a little about your technique. What makes your photographs resemble paintings?

I am a painter. My way of looking at a subject is less photographic or objective and it is often the larger composition that I like to explore. Still photography in black-and-white is my forte, and the most important aspect of it is that I can work alone as I’m not very good with a team. I also prefer the wide angle shot as it helps me to discover the interrelationships between people, their surroundings and their lives. I have been quite fascinated with the photogravure technique of printing, which the masters used to elevate the status of the lesser art form of photography to that of a painting. I tried in my own way to use paper which was 100 per cent rag and pigment-based ink to achieve a similar effect.

How do images of urban India, which appear in your work, fit in with the folk theme?

These images of the city are something that I have used to create a contrast as well as explore certain similarities. According to the scholar Herbert Read, tribal societies had a great fear of emptiness. They couldn’t live with bare walls and this led to the artwork. A similar impulse can be seen on city walls, with posters, graffiti and slogans cluttering every inch of available space.

What is the legacy of these photographs over almost half-a-century of your life?

My point was to try to capture a living tradition while it was still living, and while the folk artists, who in order to imitate our more modern way of life, forget their own age-old art. I wanted to create these beautiful images of people outside of our lives and do my own bit by introducing them to the world outside.

Diya Kohli
Who is your favourite Indian photographer? Tell t2@abpmail.com