As the title suggests, “Colors of India is largely a preoccupation with the color of Indian objects, be it the red of a door in Udaipur, a view of “the blue city of Jodhpur, or a snapshot of multicolored bangles.
Armed with a course in photography at the Contemporary Image Collective and the enthusiasm of possessing a new Canon 400D, Laila El Sadr took about 2,000 photographs during her two-week stay in India in January 2008.
Sixty of these opened her exhibit “Colors of India at the Maulana Azad Center for Indian Culture (MACIC) on Sunday, featuring pictures taken from El Sadr’s visit to various locations in India, including New Delhi, Udaipur, Bikaner, Jaipur and Jodhpur.
A graduate of the American University in Cairo, El Sadr has worked in various publications, and is currently an editor at Community Times magazine.
When El Sadr approached the MACIC in November last year, proposing an exhibit of her pictures, the cultural wing of the Indian Embassy responded with interest. To her own surprise, El Sadr also received a medal presented to her by the Indian Charge D’Affaires Rahul Kulshresth at the opening.
El Sadr told Daily News Egypt that she wanted to convey that India was “interesting in many different aspects.
“There’s more to India than the Taj Mahal, she said.
Depicting bangles, rickshaw-wallas, food, people, and monuments, the photographs carry a touristic rather than artistic appeal. As the author of the images confesses “they’re nice more because of the subject matter.
The exhibit title is self-explanatory, since Sadr found India “full of colors. The images are equally straightforward, relying largely on their subject for impact and value.
Titles such as “Red Door where a staircase in Udaipur leads to the subject and the “Green Jumper of an observer in the foreground at Junagarh Fort seem charmingly unpretentious. But they soon appear to belabor the point with similar titles such as “Blue Sky, “Blue Boat, “Red Boat, and so on.
“Bracelets shines out with its riot of colors and is cropped so that the eye does not rest on any single bunch.
In a quartet featuring solely the domes of structures in India (among them the Taj Mahal), the framing is awkward, making an otherwise interesting series mediocre.
Similarly, an attendee pointed out an awkward, noticeable variation in depth of focus in two juxtaposed pictures, depicting chips in one and candied anise in another. El Sadr, who seemed oblivious to the difference, was heard explaining that most of the pictures were taken on an auto focus setting.
Yet, El Sadr does demonstrate self-awareness when it comes to her skills in photography. “These are pictures that I took a year ago, she told Daily News Egypt, “now there is a lot of improvement that needs to be done. I’m quite critical of it.
“There are certain shots I’m very happy with, others could have been done more creatively, with techniques I hadn’t really practiced yet, she added.
The colors that inform El Sadr’s work could probably do well with further refinement and composition. As a visitor at the exhibition said, “she will be good to go for exhibitions in a few years.
Colors of India continues until Jan. 29 at MACIC at 23, Talaat Harb St., Downtown. 10 am to 6 pm on weekdays. Tel: 2393 3396
