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ImpressiveOne of Rajiv Seth’s stills.

When does photography become art? While every answer is likely to be subjective, there are times when photography ceases to be documentary and turns surreal. Photography usually chronicles what is, but Rajiv Seth’s exhibition, “The Mind’s Eye” reveals what can be.

Mounted at New Delhi’s Triveni Kala Sangam, until this Tuesday, the show first strikes one as an art exhibition, rather than a photography exhibition. The photographs are not identifiable as person, place or thing. Instead, they are like canvases of imagined landscapes. Seth’s works are striking in their simplicity. Colours are used as contrasts and not in clutters. Most frames have a dominant colour with singular detailing. Each frame is open to different interpretations. What might be a seascape to some might appear to be a desert landscape to others. Pre-historic rock paintings might jump from the wall for some viewers, but to others they might just be a crack in the surface.

What these images seem to be is up for debate, but what they are is the real mystery. Seth reveals that these photographs are the “details of things”. White etchings flit across a blue canvas. It resembles Zen strokes by a master artist. But this is no painting. Instead, discloses Seth, these are the scars left by a chain on the side of a maritime container.

These works are interestingly not taken by trial and error. Instead, Seth makes it a point to only shoot one frame of each object of interest. His work displays unexpected beauty and hidden glories. He says, “I look at details. There’s tremendous beauty in that. I am often attracted to trash. And it’s in places like junk yards and car graveyards that I have found things that interest me.” It is in detritus that he finds the perfect nexus of colour, texture and design.

A photographer for over 20 years, hisrecent collection has been shot entirely in California. The photos, he asserts, are untouched and pristine, except for a few where he confesses to having used colour filters. Like most photographers, Seth says he started with shooting the “Bunties and Bubblies”.

“But then, I realised that if I want to be an artist, I needed to be different.” Difference is what this advertising professional has succeeded in achieving. He makes poetry of the prosaic. Diesel tracks on the side of a fuel car are transformed into a landscape under his lens. A mere roll of corrugated plastic becomes a blooming sea creature.

Having surrendered his advertising work for the sake of art photography, Seth is currently working on new portfolios. He says, “Once I am done with something, I like to start on something completely new. So that’s what I am going to do.”

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