Contemporary Indian photographer Sohrab Hura receives his first solo
museum exhibition, organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum, from
October 5, 2019–February 2, 2020. The Levee: A Photographer in the
American South presents an 83-picture suite titled The Levee, in which
Hura explores themes of connection, perspective and place. Exhibited
in its entirety for the first time outside India, the suite has been
acquired by the Cincinnati Art Museum through the generosity of the
artist and Experimenter Gallery, Kolkata. The Cincinnati Art Museum is
the first American museum to exhibit Hura's work and the first public
institution to collect his photographs. The exhibition is accompanied
by an exhibition catalogue—the first substantial book publication
about the artist. While The Levee consists primarily of black and
white photographs, the exhibition also includes hand-drawn maps and
ambient sound. Unexpected color and evocative natural materials
support the artist's perception of tenderness in his American
experience. Communal seating and browsable photobooks in the gallery
will invite reflection and consideration of The Levee in larger
context. The landscapes and portraits of The Levee trace the artist's
2016 travels along the lower Mississippi River. Hura made the pictures
as a participant in Postcards from America, a loose, serial
collaboration in the form of a photographic road trip, first conceived
by American photographer Alec Soth in 2011. Over the course of six
years, Postcards fostered a reexamination of photographic perspective,
as well as producing rich documentary reflections on contemporary
American life. Hura's spring 2016 trip with the Postcards group was a
timely examination of the South, a region that has often been
represented in photography, yet remains the object of romanticization
and stereotype. However, Hura also had a personal connection to place:
just before the artist's trip along the levees of the Mississippi, his
father had traveled the river while at work on a container ship,
unable to step onto land. The photographer's journey became a metaphor
for a difficult, often distant relationship with a father who was
physically and emotionally out of reach. Nathaniel M. Stein,
Cincinnati Art Museum's Associate Curator of Photography, has long
observed Hura's career. “The clarity and urgency of his work often
stopped me in my tracks,” Stein says. “Sohrab is knowledgeable
about the history of photography, but always shedding it in an effort
to touch the quick. He has a way of making experience present—not by
picturing its outward appearance so much as plunging into its pulse
and flow. For some of his work this means pictures that embrace
so-called mistake: grain, wild exposure, blur…For The Levee it means
something quite different—a steady forthrightness that seems to
measure both pain and gentleness. Alec Soth recently said to me he
feels he can smell these photographs. Artists like Sohrab show us the
edges of what we believe photography can be and do.” Hura's
experience speaks to Cincinnati's meaningful history as a river city
and a gateway to the American South. Public programming at the museum
will use The Levee as a springboard for the community to examine
issues ranging from regional and national perceptions of the South, to
race and identity, to social implications of mental health disorders.
Hura was born in 1981 in Chinsurah, West Bengal, India and currently
lives in New Delhi. He was nominated to the renowned Magnum Photos
collective in 2014. Hura has exhibited widely, including at
Experimenter Gallery, Kolkata; Videonale, Kunstmuseum Bonn; Oberhausen
International Short Film Festival; Vancouver International Film
Festival; Image Forum, Tokyo; Moscow International Experimental Film
Festival; Berlin Atonal; Shanghai Biennale; Minnesota Street Projects,
San Francisco; FotoFest Biennial, Houston; Art Basel, Hong Kong; India
Art Fair, Delhi; Bontanique, Brussels; Science Museum, London; and (in
fall 2019) Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, England. He has published several
award-winning photobooks under the imprint Ugly Dog, including Life is
Elsewhere (2015), A Proposition for Departure (2017) and Look It's
Getting Sunny Outside!!! (2018), which deal with his relationship with
his mother through her mental illness, and The Coast (2019), which
delves into the shifting landscape of fact and fiction in contemporary
Indian society. The Levee (an artist's book that complements the
catalogue accompanying Cincinnati exhibition) is his next anticipated
title.
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03/02/2020 Last update