Photographer Eric Meola and children in India during Holi.
Some may find an Old Media tome, however beautifully produced, a little
anachronistic in the digital age. Eric Meola’s India: In Word & Image proves why it is
not. His passion and attention to detail give the photographs in his book a
meditative quality, providing a welcome relief from the freewheeling New Media.
Do we really need another coffee-table book on India, especially if a previous
edition is available?
Probably not. But if you’re not familiar with photographer Eric Meola’s work
and his earlier India: In Word and Image (Welcome Books), this “revised, expanded,
and updated” edition will bring sparkle to your—or your gift recipient’s—
holiday season. It’s not cheap, but if you’re looking for an immersive armchair
travel experience in the company of a master photographer, this ticket to India
is a bargain.
The Bathukamma festival in Warangal culminates in the placement of lavish arrangements of flowers, along with an idol of the
goddess Parvati, in a lake or river.
Meola has received numerous awards and his work
appears in several collections and museums, including
the National Portrait Gallery. A photographer for over
four decades, and a Canon “Explorer of Light,” Meola’s
first book, The Last Places on Earth, came out a decade
ago. We can sum up his attraction to India by seven C’s:
Colors, Complexity, Celebrations, Culture, Contradictions,
Changes, Curiosity. One could easily add another
C (Chaos)—but Meola writes, “I was startled one day to
realize that what I had seen as infinite chaos was, in
fact, infinitely ordered, and in that simple truth I found
the soul of India.”
A monk of the Gelugpa sect sews an elaborate thanka, an embroidered Buddhist banner that often depicts the life of Buddha, at the Thikse monastery, near Leh in Ladakh. Thankas are often
hung in monasteries or carried by monks in ceremonial processions.
It’s an homage, as such books often tend to be,
and one will certainly feel pride, even nostalgia, while
spending time with a craftsman who takes such delight
in bringing the country vividly to life. Less successful
are the excerpts from well-known authors,
mostly writing in English. These range from old-timers
like Tagore, Narayan, Chugtai, Jhabvala, and Markandaya
to contemporary writers like Rushdie, Sealy, the Desais,
Suri, and Lahiri. We have Nirad Chaudhuri, along
with Amit Chaudhuri. But the extracts are too short
to be useful and there are no author bios. Though the
text adds flavor, the lack of context can be a little
frustrating. The concise photo captions, on the other
hand, are illuminating.
Nomadic woman on the sand dunes at Pushkar.
While monuments and majestic vistas are prominently
featured, just as important are the people of
India—and Meola makes the most of the trust and
access he wins across the country, allowing him to
showcase his tableau of images in the manner of a
lush documentary. It is this “private India” that author
Bharati Mukherjee refers to in her introduction to
the book. As she notes, “he uncovers the beauty (and
the ballet) of survival embedded in the daily lives of
ordinary citizens: a boy bathing his family’s water
buffalo, a man hanging up the day’s laundry, wives
toting tiffin carriers of food to husbands tilling fields,
worshippers floating votive clay lamps in holy river
water, a child being hugged by her mother, adults
smearing each other with brilliantly hued powders
during the annual spring “holi” festival, vendors
hawking jasmine wreaths and marigold petals…”
Khabar, too, highlights this extraordinary ordinariness
of India in its selection of Meola’s snapshots.
Traditional Rajput musicians perform at the Jaisalmer fort.