Flying over Maddy Land

I First met Madhavan Palanisamy and his works in a show that was a part of CPB 2016. The show was called 'in dreams.'. I remember the show for the shock i felt when i encountered the image of beloved writer Kovai Gnani in one of the pictures. i was shocked at the treatment of a father figure and his blindness. i went back to the artist's bio note to gather more information about the artist, and it was a surprise to discover that Maddy was the son of Kovai Gnani. i was also glad to have Maddy around and talk to him about the shock and get over it.

After i got talking to Maddy about the show, i started making sense of his other works, but the portrayal of the father figure was still unpalatable for me. After all these years, i got an opportunity to listen to Maddy again, and this time talking about the entire gamut of his photographic, personal and professional journey on a platform made possible by Thalam. This was a good opportunity for me to understand and appreciate Maddy's works in their entirety over a span of a couple of decades. 

At this juncture, i should thank Thalam for providing an opportunity to listen to and have a glimpse of a lifetime's work of so many photographers. This has come as a boon during this lock down period to understand, appreciate and engage with so many different professional paractices, journeys and aspirations. 

Maddy's upbringing as the youngest child in a doting home, where he was 12 years younger to his elder brother; His scholarly father's doting on him and taking him along to watch avantgarde European movies, and sowing in him a sense of freedom in his thinking and sensibilities all show in different aspects of Maddy's body of works. Maddy seems to savour a childish enquiry and treatment of the world around him. This is most evident in the occasional graphic story board that features in his works.

These graphic illustrations are at once playful and profound in their minimalism. Maddy arrives at photography after dabbling with a career in Pharma and Management. He presented an overview of his works done under commission and of his personal experiments with photography. I have engaged mostly with the non commissioned body of work, though i have occasionally drawn from the commissioned work only to illustrate my view point. In my reading, there are two things that run common through Maddy's body of works - sensuality and playfulness.

Maddy creates an aura of sensuality in his images by playing with the lighting of the face. The sensuality in his images are deeply embedded and coded in the lighting and positioning. A woman's toe placed tenuously on a man's head was the hieght of sensuality in his images for me. But here Maddy plays around with the viewer's perception by not giving the viewer anything away to guess that it is a woman's foot, and further places the image in the middle of a deep cosmos like ambience and evokes the images of a primordial Shiva and Shakthi. 

One also wonders if it is the light that Maddy fancies and fetishizes. This is more so evident in his work built around his visit to America. He is fascinated by the different quality of the light in that part of the world and produces and dreamy body of images, where building facades look like fabric and landscapes carry an European film montage like quality. 

Maddy's playfulness is what is amply evident in most of his work. he does this by introducing Graffiti and toys into his work. 

He introduces another layer of playfulness by knocking down the legs of science and the laws of ordinary perception and throwing an unhinged image at the viewer and inviting him to explore the dimensions that the viewer can bring to the work. In his images, mountains, and rivers are removed from their geographical sensibilities and reduced to a topography of crushed paper, folds on a bed spread and thick lines curving on a graphic sketch board. He would also invert scale by creating a perception of the cosmos from a close up of a conglomeration of speck of dust. 

The series Simla special manifests another dimension of playfulness, wherein he invents new images that monumentalise and marry his own and his son's sensibilities. 

He creates a collage of images and enjoys disrupting the viewers sense of balanced perception. He takes away the viewers crutches of conditioned vision and invites him to discover a new balance in his picture. He invites the viewer to join in on a new state of mindfulness.

Apart from sensuality and playing around, the influence of his writer father runs quite prominent in Maddy's body of work- the obsession with the written word, the type face of a printed word, the aspiration to poem making, the playfulness with which the father gives himself up in totality to his son's playful world - offer interesting paradigms to Maddy's work.

Maddy accords the animal subjects in his pictures a great sense of dignity of a kind that is rare to be ever encountered. i believe this again comes from a very tangential influence of the philosophy to which his father subscribes to. 

Maddy's commissioned works form a small plantation tract in a corner of the dense forest of Maddy land . It is his inventiveness and disruptiveness that come across prominently in his commissioned works for Coffee day, CPB and CSK.

Cinematic Imagination

Chennai owes a lot to Helmut Schippert, the Director of Goethe Institute, for bringing so much art, colour and discourse from across the world and the country to home. What a deprived time we would have had but for these culture evangelists. Talking of angels, i wish to also mention others who have done fantastic work on these lines for the city.

When you talk of Germans, the French can't be far behind. Pierre-Emmanuel who until recently was the Director here at AFM was also instrumental in bringing so much cultural activity to the city. One other thing that stands out in these two gentle men is that they were easily approachable, open to ideas and took heart to attend local cultural events and appreciate the arts and talents of the land.

The British council and US consulate though paler and understated in comparison, nevertheless have made their own contributions to the city's culturescape. Whereas the former two are more outgoing and enterprising establishments, the latter two are more withdrawn and engage on more cordial and conservative terms. 

It's not as if the city's culture oxygens are fed only by these foreign cultural attaches, our local players have treated the city to some fascinating and awesome shows matching these agencies in grandeur and vibrancy. Ranvir Shah's Prakriti Foundation is prominent among these. The city is a poorer place without the grand array of events like the Short and sweet plays( an exciting testing ground for identifying and nurturing theatre talents), Poetry Festival ( bringing poets from across the world and the country to different venues and more importantly to colleges across Chennai), Contemporary Dance festival and other engaging book launches and lectures that Prakriti had made possible in the city. The city had found in Ranvir a great connoisseur and patron of arts, theatre, literature and heritage. One wishes Ranvir could get back to doing what he does best - keeping the city informed and entertained. 

With that wishful thinking, i wish to get back to my present brief of what Goethe institute has brought in its latest serving of cultural treat. In this post i am talking about three servings- one an Exhibition at LKA, Chennai; two, a curated screening of films at the Goethe Institute; and three, about the film Achyut Kanya that features both in the Exhibition and the curated film screening.

In collabration with CPB foundation and In sprucing up the premises of Lalit Kala Akademi, Chennai in Hosting a Photographic exhibition, reminiscing a glorious piece of Indian Cinema History, they have brought home the glorious pages of history of the birth, grooming and flourish of the Bombay Talkies; featuring, the splendid dreamy stories of Devika Rani, Himanshu Rai, Niranjan Pal; the stories of German collaborations- Jews finding refuge and bringing with them a new sense of enterprise and finesse of technique and glimpses of the vision of a man Josef Wirsching. In the process the Goethe Institute has also brought to the city the contagious and enterprising aura of the Serendipity Arts Festival.

While Devika Rani steals the show with her towering and ubiquitous presence in the show, one also gets a good feel of the contributions of Josef Wirschng, Niranjan Pal and other technicians of Bombay talkies during the 20s and the 30s. It's a celebration  of a production house, leaving us wondering what fascinating history lies waiting to be showcased in other production houses of the period. 

The exhibition could have easily ended as a romantic reminiscing of a piece of the past but for some interesting stories hidden in the narrative. For instance, a Photograph showing Josef in an internment during war period, putting together a picture book for his son has so much to say.

One is also left awestruck by the variety and depth of social consciousness beaming in the stories and scripts the BT had chosen for its movies. Izzat is a movie based on the historical conflict between the Bhils and the Marathas and Jawani ki Hawa is another with it's novel treatment of capturing a major part of the movie on a moving train stand out among the exhibits.

It was very thoughtful of the Goethe institute to arrange for the screening of some of these films from the 1920s and 30s and also set a context to appreciate the aesthetics of German expressionism as featured in films like Metropolis by Fritz Lanz, 1926 and Dr. Calligiri by  Robert Wiene, 1919, that the technicians like Franz Osten ( Sjiraz, Achyut Kanya) , Joe May ( The Indian Tomb, 1921) bring to Indian cinema.  The parallel screening of these movies by arranging a studied curation called ' Indian Expressionism through German Lens'  by the expert hands of Hariharan and Uma Vangal, who were also pitching in with their thoughts and inviting discussions from the audience. It was a very heartening sight to see a  dedicated bunch of students learnig film engaging with these films from a century ago, not for a moment whining or flinching in attention during the screening of these films from a very early era of Cinema.

Among the invited speakers, Suresh Chabria in his talk brought a context to expressionism as seen in Edward Munch's Scream painting and outlined the features of German expressionism in its manifestation in the movies in prominent play of Shadows, diagonal and distorted lines, animate sets, etc. and amply illustrated the talk with clippings from the films Dr Calligari, Metropolis, etc.

The screening of Achyut Kanya featuring Devika Rani, and Ashok Kumar and directed by Franz osten, Camera by Josef Wirsching complemented and completed the experience of the Exhibition 'Cinematic Imagination' to perfection. 

The plot of the film aspires to highlight the effect of caste in Indian life by lacing it with a bunch of love stories. Even though the film is very subdued in its treatment of the subject of caste it doesn't restrain from landing a few deep punches that resonate even to this day. For instance, when one character invokes Hindu Dharma to castigate another and settle scores from elsewhere, one is surprised how pertinent those dialogues and situations are and still resonate in our midst. 

 Every character in the movie is given a very gentle, sympathetic and wholesome treatment, and yet Devika Rani and Ashok kumar stand out with their subdued performance. 

It was interesting to see the lead characters sing their lines too. The songs were very memorable ones. There was also one of the earliest instances of Play back singing of a very touching 'Boat man song'. The boat man song keeps recurring in the movie. in an earlier instance in the movie it is sung in another version, when women from the neighbourhood work together preparing for some festivity.

The film also doesn't fail to capture the spirit and festivity of a village fair in it all its glory, the simple ways of the village folks and finally the different problems faced by married couple. 

The film is so very tightly and richly woven that not one sequence is out of place or unwarranted. It was a fantastic experience to watch a very sensible and a well meaning from almost a century ago.