Portrait of a yogi
An exhibition in Delhi goes beyond the confines of religion to explore the world of the mystics, writes
Geetanjali Krishna
The lama demonstrates traditional Tibetan healing practices in the forest, his arms outstretched like the branches of the trees around him. Ahead, a white muslin cloth envelops the Jain monk like a cloud, and beyond, the frame is lit up by the beatific expression of a Buddhist teacher blessing an acolyte. As one walks through Briana Blasko’s ongoing photo exhibition, Within Without: The Path of the Yogi, at Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery, images like these paint a sensitive portrait of the everyday lives of gurus and seekers of different spiritual pursuits.
Blasko, who used to be a photographer with The New York Times, spent four years photographing Jain monks, Sufis, Buddhist lamas, Catholic priests and yoga practitioners to document not just their ritual practices but to also showcase the quiet, peaceful beauty of the ascetic life.
The exhibition has a meandering, backand-forth quality, as Blasko has deliberately chosen not to organise her subjects by their religious faiths. “During the time I spent with yogis of different spiritual persuasions, I realised that there is an innate sameness in their practices that transcends the confines of religion,” she says. In a sense, Within Without focuses on the beauty of the perfectly still mind, doing away with the western notion of the “exoticness” of the religions of the sub-continent. This stillness and sense of deep spirituality, Blasko documents, extends to their most mundane activities such as sweeping, washing clothes and even travelling.
Some of the most evocative photographs in the series are of Jain monks and nuns with whom she spent two years. Their lives are especially frugal, spartan even, and Blasko’s colour photographs of them look like they’ve been shot in black and white. In comparison, her photographs of Sufis are appropriately more colourful. There is an incandescent photograph of a
Sufi father with his daughter, smiling at one another, their filial connection so strong that one can almost see it. Then ahead, in keeping with the back-and-forth style of the exhibition, the centrepiece is an image — large enough to draw the viewer into the frame — of three Jain monks going about their daily rituals in a spotless community centre. On the face of it, they’re working independently, not even looking at each other. Yet, their interconnectedness comes through vividly in the frame.
One of those rare photographers who doesn’t like to take a lot of pictures, Blasko confesses that, at one point, she thought she might not even have enough material for an exhibition. “While I was with these gurus, some of their practices were so intimate, so precious, that I decided not to take out my camera and risk becoming obtrusive,” says she. “In photography, if you don’t take a picture it’s as if the event did not happen, but there seems to be a part of me that believes that sometimes not taking a picture is just as valuable.” This discipline imparts a curiously spiritual element to the exhibition, which is almost as spare, as minimal as the lives of the people it documents.
An eponymous book has also been published by HarperCollins that has all the 71 photographs in the series (only about half are on display at the exhibition). In an essay in the book, Blasko explains what makes photographing the daily lives of yogis (she uses the term independent of any religious connotations). She writes: “Even when silent and still, those who have found inner peace can make a profoundly transformative impact on those around them.”
In his preface to the book, Pico Iyer appreciates Blasko’s “readiness to follow India into the silent places where truly its energy lives”. And this is what makes both the exhibition and the book interesting, not only for photography aficionados but also for those who are interested in, or seek, spirituality that transcends narrow religious identities.
The exhibition has a meandering, back-and-forth quality, as Blasko has deliberately chosen not to organise her subjects by their religious faiths
Within Without: The Path of the Yogi is showing at Vadehra Art Gallery, D-53, Defence Colony, New Delhi till December 30, 2017