Pablo Bartholomew’s The Calcutta Diaries captures how the city looked in the 70s and 80s
He captured Kolkata when the city was on the cusp of change. Photographer Pablo Bartholomew, who has seen the city reshaping, is now exhibiting his images dating back to 1970s and 80s at gallery Akar Prakar.
Titled The Calcutta Diaries, the exhibition gets memories of Kolkata as it was 30 years ago. In the body of work, the photographer has dedicated an entire section to his grandmother. He left Burma along with his family and travelled the length and breadth of the northeastern states before settling down in Kolkata where his grandmother was living. There is also an interesting section on Satyajit Ray, shot while he was working on Shatranj Ke Khiladi.
The photographer abandoned his schooling in class nine and took up the camera. In his early teens, he photographed family, friends, people and cities. At 19, he was awarded the first prize by the World Press Photo for his series on morphine addicts. His first solo exhibitions at Art Heritage Gallery, Delhi (1979) and Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay (1980) featured works that captured the marginal, fringe worlds in which he lived.
In 1984, he won the World Press Photo “Picture of the Year” award for his iconic image of the dead, half-buried body of a child victim of the disastrous Bhopal Gas Tragedy.
For over 20 years, he worked as a photojournalist, recording societies in conflict and transition. Since 2007, Bartholomew has been working intensely with his father, Richard Bartholomew’s photography archive, exhibiting a selection from it in India and abroad.