Dr. Shernaz Cama the founding director of UNESCO PARZOR Project speaks on ZAMWI ZOOM, a lecture series curated by the Zoroastrian Association of Metropolitan Washington DC.

We are thrilled to share a very timely initiative by our dear friend and brilliant filmmaker Divya Cowasji. She writes…

“I am Divya Cowasji, a Parsi filmmaker and photographer from India. Like everyone here, I am trying to do my bit to help out with the covid nightmare that is unfolding daily at home. I am part of a collective of women photographers from India called 8:30. We are organizing a print sale fundraiser for grassroots organizations helping the most vulnerable through the covid crisis in India.

You can contribute by buying one (or more!) of these beautiful prints. 100% of proceeds (barring production cost and shipping) will go to the organizations listed who are doing incredible work in these trying times. Please help out if you can, and receive beautiful prints in return.

Please find prices and details of prints and organizations in the PDF linked below.

Download Catalog

Do also share and spread the word!

Ole! Flamenco was founded by Behnaz Khusrokhan Bhandare. Behnaz started dancing at the age of 4 at the School of Classical Ballet and Western dance in Mumbai. She has a Bachelors in Dance from Denison University, USA. Post college she moved to New York, where she danced with various dance companies including World Dance Fusion Company, Calpulli Mexican Dance Company, Mezclado and Camara Modern dance Companies as well as the Surati Classical Indian and folk dance company. She also spent a year in Sevilla, Spain where she did an intensive advanced level flamenco course and performed with the Christina Heeren Foundation. She has performed in various places all over the world including Mumbai, New York, Seville, Washington DC and Anchorage, Alaska.

Performed and choreographed by Behnaz Khusrokhan.

Meet the one-woman army who became the force behind some of Indian classical arts’ heavyweights who performed in Europe in the 1980s and ’90s

In the Bombay Parsi home that London-based writer and former impresario Shireen Isal grew up in, it was Western music that prevailed. She was brought up on, and extensively studied, the piano. The Indian classical arts never really figured in conversations at home or even otherwise, she tells us, when we meet at the Royal Bombay Yacht Club on a weekday morning during her visit here. It comes as a surprise that Isal, in her later years, would go on to manage nearly 50 Indian classical artistes and their accompanists, spearheading almost 600 events in 16 European countries for them. She admits that nothing in her early years prepared her for it. But, her home city was where the groundwork for this began. While working at the Alliance Française de Bombay in the early 1970s, a chance encounter with Padma Shri, dance historian and critic Sunil Kothari, led her to discover other Indian classical arts. “For the next year-and-a-half or two, I went to every conceivable performance possible [in the city], and listened and watched, speaking to people in the field,” she recalls. By the time, she got married and moved to Paris, she realised that there’s “no other field I wanted to work in”.

Article by Jane Borges | Mid-Day

Shireen Isal. Pic/Bipin Kokate
In her new book, Joy, Awe and Tears: My Association with Sargam, available on parsiana.com, Isal goes down memory lane to when she started her own artiste management organisation, Sargam, which became the nerve centre for several leading Indian classical artistes, who wanted a platform in Europe. While working briefly as cultural assistant at the Indian Embassy in the French capital, she got the opportunity to liaise with French organisers and artistes involved with Indian culture. “Once, the cultural councillor asked me, on a very short notice, to organise a performance for Swapnasundari [leading exponent of Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam]. The show was a great success, and I remember, as we were returning to the hotel [where she was put up], I happened to tell her that I was planning on leaving [my job] as I was finding it very difficult to look after my baby. I asked her if she thought I could do this organisational work [on my own]. She said, ‘Not only will you be able to do this, I’ll also be the first artiste [you manage] next year’. She stuck to her word when I began in October 1979.” As an impresario, Isal says she represented Indian classical artistes—“I didn’t organise the events,” she clarifies. “I went through organisers [who wanted to do these shows, and call these artistes],” she says. It wasn’t a financially viable enterprise. “Artistes would give me 15 per cent of their earnings from their shows, which I ploughed back into my organisation, and that helped me cover my costs. It wasn’t easy, especially since I was doing this entirely on my own.” 

Isal with Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Alla Rakha, in 1984. It was the late sitar maestro who gave her association its name

Until 1983, Isal worked on an ad-hoc basis. “I didn’t even have a structure. But when [Pandit] Raviji [Shankar] came on board, I suddenly felt we needed something more concrete. That’s when I registered as a non-profit. We still didn’t have a name. Then Raviji arrived in Paris. I remember being very nervous. So, my husband Jean-Pierre decided to drive Raviji to the hotel. During that drive, Jean-Pierre may have mentioned to him that we were looking for a name for our organisation, and that’s when he came up with the name, Association Sargam.” The logo was designed at Chimanlals Pvt Ltd in Fort.

Isal had a near nine-year association with Pandit Ravi Shankar helping him find concerts in Paris; she had an even longer professional  relationship with his sister-in-law Lakshmi Shankar, who she says became family. The late Ustad Bismillah Khan, however, had a lasting impact on her. “Nobody came anywhere close. He was unique. Even now, I talk to him every day. He taught me so much. When I was going through a personal sorrow, Khansahib gave me advice that was easy to comprehend and comforting to live with. He also symbolised an immense, deep and unwavering faith in God, and that I think, coloured everything he said and did,” she shares. During the long drives to their concert halls or hotels, he’d never talk. “He was always praying, and sometimes, I’d find myself doing the same.” The last time they met—a few years before his passing in 2006—at the Nehru Centre in Mumbai, he told her, he’d come running, if she invited him. “That’s my only regret.” The shehnai maestro, she says, could never envisage a trip to the West without a mandatory pilgrimage to Karbala in Iraq. “But the war had broken out in Iraq, and the city was only accessible via an overland route from Jordan, and he was too old for that.”  She also writes about many celebrated artistes, Begum Parveen Sultana, Geeta Radhakrishna and Bharatanatyam exponent Rohinton Cama whom she feels “has never received his just dues by way of performances and participation in dance recitals [in his home country],” which led to his tragic early retirement from the dance scene. 

Ustad Bismillah Khan and Isal in 1993. Pics Courtesy/Association Sargam

She has steered away from talking about the unpleasant events with artistes, even though there were a few because she feels it would breach their trust. On an average, Sargam sent every artiste to at least six different European cities. “Raviji really laid the groundwork for other Indian artistes. I think it’s very important that everyone realises his contribution.”

Isal ran Sargam for 39 years between Paris and London, where she moved with family in 1990; she hung her boots in 2018 with one last performance by her dear friend Begum Parveen Sultana. “Sargam wouldn’t have been possible without these artistes. They were all so gentle and understanding of the conditions in which I was working. I owe them a huge debt.”

Remembering Sam Tata, the photographer who was equally at ease on the street and in the studio

Between taking portraits of everyone from Prithviraj Kapoor to Leonard Cohen, Tata teamed with Henri Cartier-Bresson to capture a snapshot of the 20th century.

Article by Kamayani Sharma Scroll.in

In 1949, China was experiencing historic upheaval as a long-raging civil war came to an end. The conflict between the insurgent Chinese Communist Party and the dominant Kuomintang finally concluded with the Communist Party’s official proclamation of the People’s Republic of China and the Kuomintang’s retreat to form the Republic of China, also called Taiwan. Perhaps the most famous photographs of this turbulent moment are the ones featured in Henri Cartier-Bresson’s China in Transition, originally shot for Life magazine. Often accompanying Cartier-Bresson on the streets of Shanghai was another photographer with his Leica – a local resident of Indian descent, called Sam Tata. His pictures of this period offer a rare glimpse into how the change of regime was experienced by the average Shanghainese.

Ann Thomas, assistant curator at the erstwhile Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (since absorbed into the National Gallery of Canada), who organised End of an Era: Shanghai 1949 – a touring North American exhibition of Tata’s work in the 1980s and 1990s – described it as “the only visual record of the actual arrival of the Communists in Shanghai that I’ve come across”. Had it not been for Tata’s brief stint in India and a chance meeting in Bombay with Cartier-Bresson, this corpus of photographs might have taken a different shape.

Sam Tata. Courtesy Toni Tata.

Sam Tata was born in 1911 in Shanghai to a family of wealthy Parsi industrialists (distant cousins of the Indian business family by that name) who had shifted from India to China in the early 20th century. After studying business at the University of Hong Kong, in the mid-1930s Tata took up photography, a hobby he shared with his father. Apart from Chinese peers Chin-San Long and Liu Xucang, the two figures who influenced the young Tata’s development as a lensman were American photojournalist Alex Buchman, whom he met at the Shanghai Camera Club, and Latvian portraitist Oscar Seepol.

In a 1988 interview, Tata credited Buchman with urging him to buy a Leica: “I began taking photos and did a photo series on Chinese actors but my first real work was in the streets.” This was against the backdrop of a volatile political situation intensified by the takeover of Shanghai in 1937 by Japanese troops on the march towards Second World War. Recalling the dark days of Japanese occupation, Tata claimed, “My first good photograph is my friend…and his…wife…on a rooftop watching the bombing of Shanghai by Japanese planes…”

Sam Tata
Open-air Library, 1949 pic.twitter.com/PHGLpuWHn5

— Mitch68 (@Mitch6813) August 25, 2021

As it became increasingly dangerous to venture out, Tata and other Shanghainese photographers withdrew indoors, to focus on portraiture. Apart from the Leica, Tata now used medium-format cameras “a 2 ¼ by 3 ¼ Graflex on a tripod,…floodlights for still life, and a 3 ½ x 4 J.H.Dallmeyer Junior Classic”. During this time, Tata learned the techniques of studio photography from Seepol, who had been associated with the Hamilton Studios in Bombay and knew the eminent Indian pictorialist photographer Jehangir Unwalla. “Oscar Seepol…taught me a lot about studio photography, how to develop films well, mix the chemicals and make good prints,” he said.

In his essay ‘Sam Tata: Eye of the Observer’ for the catalogue of The Tata Age/ L’Epoque Tata (1988), a retrospective at the erstwhile Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, curator Pierre Dessureault writes, “To his mother’s chagrin, he [Tata] converted a small room in the new family home into a crude darkroom…he staged genre scenes inspired by the history of art or The Arabian Nights…These expertly orchestrated compositions required painstaking construction of the image: each element was photographed separately, then reproduced on a paper negative which was carefully retouched to create a seamless blend of the parts.”

This highly formal approach to photography, the mainstay of the pictorialist aesthetic that privileged the camera’s expressive capacity for approximating fine art, propelled Tata towards portraiture, for which he became known later, in his Canadian career during the latter half of the 20th century.

Shanghai, before the end of an era, May 1949,by Sam Tata. pic.twitter.com/U4enTrRzVd

— Tong Bingxue 仝冰雪 (@tongbingxue) April 6, 2022

With the experience of photographing both on the streets and in the salon, Tata looked West – to India. Though he had taken many trips to the country with his father, the two years he spent in Bombay beginning 1947 seem to have resulted from the desire to explore his ancestral roots. Like Seepol, Tata came to engage with Unwalla and other city photographers. In a December 1949 article for Marg titled ‘Photography in India and the Far East’, Tata discussed the work of Indian pictorialists and documentary photographers like Shapoor N Bhedwar, JS Tarapore, Unwalla, NJ Nalawalla, FR Ratnagar, Jayant Patel, AL Syed, RA Bacha and Sunil Janah, evincing that he had become conversant with his contemporaries’ practice while in Bombay. His own work received a positive response that nevertheless suggested that he had yet to realise the extent of his craft. Reviewing his work at the seventh all-India exhibition of photography, The Times of India’s art critic Rudy von Leyden noted, “As always, I liked Sam Tata’s powerful portraits, although…I find too many outward effects and not enough inward penetration.”

According to Dessureault, “Tata’s first solo exhibition, sponsored by the Bombay Art Society, was held in November 1947 in a Rampart Row gallery. Unwalla…presided at the opening of the show, which included sixty portraits and genre scenes.” According to his daughter Toni, during this time he became friendly with other artists, such as Shiavax Chavda and MF Husain (who would exhibit his work at the Bombay Art Society’s Salon as part of the Progressive Artist Group’s first show in 1949), as well as the Sri Lankan artist and writer Anil de Silva.

He soon became part of Bombay’s thriving cosmopolitan cultural scene, which was similar to Shanghai’s in its mix of local and emigré members, some of whom would go on to sit for him, such as writer Mulk Raj Anand, actor Prithviraj Kapoor (whom he also shot in the play Pathan), artist and critic Walter Langhammer and, eventually, Cartier-Bresson himself.

© Sam Tata. Courtesy Toni Tata.

In the third week of February 1948, Sam Tata met Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Bombay Art Gallery’s Salon on Rampart Row: “…a magazine called Pop Photography…had a feature article on Cartier-Bresson that quite intrigued me, so I went to the show…I was introduced to him and took that rather well known portrait of him with sandals in a safari jacket, one of many portraits I took at that time.” One series of portraits, titled ‘Spotlight on Six Prominent People’, included Anand, Kapoor, industrialist JRD Tata and Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court MC Chagla.

Tata’s way of making portraits involved many considerations. For example, commenting on his portrait of Walter Langhammer, he mentioned how, by having him sit with one of his paintings in the backdrop, he managed to capture “the expression…peculiar to the artist when weighing up the progress of his paintings”.

Toni provides further insight into her father’s process as articulated by him to the family: “His portraits were compositions of conversation between himself and the individual being photographed, in the manner they wished to be photographed and the space they wished to be photographed in.” Tellingly, John Metcalf in his essay ‘Conversations Without Words’ for the The Tata Age catalogue informs us, Tata termed the photos featuring domestic interiors that reveal the sitter’s personality “environmental portraits”.

In the summer of 1948, Tata’s series titled ‘Native Land’ featured in another magazine called Trend, largely comprising portraits of Indians whom Tata came across in public spaces. Photos of vendors, porters, hawkers, roadside shopkeepers, buskers, people asking for alms – all of these protagonists appear as part of a South Asian urban context in Tata’s photos from the 1940s. Perhaps understandably, Tata does seem to have looked at India through the lens of an outsider. He describes being struck by its religious fervour and “exotic” quality, which is an assertion hard to divorce from his images of the country. Today perhaps these images might be seen as conforming to an ethnographic gaze indicative of a colonial typology. Yet, as in the case of formal portraits, with the candid framing of his subjects at ease in their own domain, Tata manages to render them as distinct individuals who are part of a vital and complex social landscape.

In 1949, Tata returned home to Shanghai. His friendship with Cartier-Bresson and their joint expeditions shooting on the streets of Bombay (which he termed “foot-slogging”) greatly impacted his work, urging him out of the studio once again. Cartier-Bresson stayed at the Tata’s Shanghai home (whose property deed he photographed, as the People’s Liberation Army was entering the city) for five months in 1949, during which time the two of them would go out with their Leicas into the tumult of the city. Similar to Cartier-Bresson’s big picture chronicles, albeit less self-conscious, Tata’s straightforward and sympathetic observations of this moment playing out in the everyday life of Shanghai are informed by his familiarity with his hometown and the people he shared it with.

A coolie woman walks the streets of Bombay in monsoon with an umbrella, c.1948.
Photographer Sam Tata. Source: National Gallery of Canada #bombay #Mumbai #bombayrains #MumbaiRains #streetphotos #history #historypics pic.twitter.com/Rdk54GO6Un

— The Paperclip (@Paperclip_In) November 13, 2021

The sensitivity to the social that Tata had sharpened in India is apparent in images of citizens reacting to a situation they had little control over – a child awaiting his parents in a basket, an amputee soldier writing on the pavement, evacuees departing, workers, shopkeepers and leisure-takers going about life as history happened. Looking back many years later on the events of 1949, he said, “I was in my city of birth, I had a camera, and I just never left the house without it…I just photographed…I didn’t avoid anything or seek anything out.” In Tata’s opinion, the purpose of photojournalism was to capture human reality and individual experience as it was, not embellish it. In an interview with Dessureault, he explained, “The function of a photojournalist is to observe and record. One can never be objective…the photographer being a human being…But it is possible not to take sides, not to use the camera deliberately as propaganda…”

Ironically, it was precisely concerns around the representation of the 1949 revolution that led to Tata’s photographs being out of sight for more than two decades after he originally took them. “Of course, the Communists wanted to see everything we printed,” recalled Tata, “So he [Cartier-Bresson] and I got into a darkroom and I processed…negatives and made contact sheets….” Dessureault gives an account of how differently the principle of censorship affected the two photographers, one a world-renowned Frenchman on assignment with Magnum Photos, and the other a little-known Indian Shanghainese.

While most of Tata’s negatives had to be smuggled out by an embassy official (a few were dispatched to the New York-based Black Star agency), Cartier-Bresson’s contact sheets were allowed to leave China without problems. Later, in 1952, when Tata left Shanghai forever, the Chinese government was even stricter: “On the grounds that they constituted an insult to the Chinese people in their uncritical depiction of the old world of traditional activities…many of Tata’s early photographs were seized. Only a few rare negatives of his work from the 1930s escaped the censors’ zeal.” It wasn’t until 1970 that the Shanghai negatives were retrieved by Ron Solomon of Canada’s National Film Board who curated what would, in 1981, become the travelling exhibition The End of an Era (published as a book in 1990).

© Sam Tata. Courtesy Toni Tata.

© Sam Tata. Courtesy Toni Tata.

The experience of shooting Shanghai in 1949 seemed to have been a decisive moment in Tata’s approach, leading him to pivot away from the pictorialism of his early career and to destroy his older work in the 1960s. In an interview with Dessureault, he said, “I desired no longer to be an etcher or a painter with my camera, which is an instrument…of…a kind of rhythmic realism integrating composition and a reasonable technique…” Tata applied this understanding of photography on his next trip to India in 1955, when he photographed the Amarnath Yatra in a photo essay titled ‘Himalayan Pilgrimage’, originally commissioned by Life and later published in National Geographic (October 1956) when the former “decided they [the photographs] had too much religion and didn’t want it”.

The series includes wide-angle landscapes of Kashmir’s mountains, the architecture of Srinagar, Hindu pilgrims, Muslim mosque-goers and, of course, scenes of Kashmiri life. On the same trip on which she accompanied her father, Toni remembers that they went to Jaipur, Delhi, Amritsar and Bombay, taking snapshots along the way: a priest blessing the faithful in Jaipur, devotees at the Golden Temple, Amritsar and a crowd milling at the steps of Delhi’s Jama Masjid. In keeping with his philosophy to “be alive to what is happening”, Tata’s awareness of the surroundings and his ability to frame people in the comfort of their milieu rescues the work from falling prey to tropes of the mysterious East.

By the 1980s, Tata had established himself as one of Canada’s leading portraitists, having photographed eminent figures from that country like writer Alice Munro, musician Leonard Cohen, filmmaker Norman McLaren and actors William Shatner, Donald Sutherland and Christopher Plummer. In 1983, his work over 25 years culminated in a book called A Certain Identity: 50 Portraits. In the same year, Tata visited India for the last time, “disappointed” by what he perceived as a decline in living conditions.

From this trip, there is a picture of him taken in 1984 at Mahalaxmi, by photographer, filmmaker and screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, hinting at the broader social and cultural networks that he continued to be part of, even as a diaspora artist. Toni confirms this: “I do know on that trip he did portraits of Sooni, [photographer] Raghu Rai, [cartoonist] RK Laxman, [artists] Jehangir Sabavala and KH Ara, [actors] Jennifer Kendall Kapoor and Shashi Kapoor, [writer] Khushwant Singh…[poet] Nissim Ezekiel.”

In 1990, Tata was awarded the lifetime achievement award by The Canadian Association of Professional Image Creators. He passed away in British Columbia in 2005. Spanning six decades and two continents, Tata’s practice evolved through different stages and styles. Even though Tata’s best-known photographs belong to China and Canada, the role that India played in this evolution, perhaps by circumstance more than design, is worth speculating on.

The writer would like to thank the following for their help: Andrea Kunard and Josée-Britanie Mallet at the National Gallery of Canada, John Shoesmith and Olivia White at the University of Toronto, Maggie Hunter at the University of Calgary and independent photographer and historian Don Denton.

Kamayani Sharma is an independent writer, researcher and podcaster based in New Delhi. She is a Kalpalata Fellow in Visual Culture Writing for 2022.

Mumbai’s culture has been enriched and entwined with the Parsi community for centuries now. From the Parsi gara to the nataks to business, the community has contributed immeasurably and been appreciated in return.

By Ava Gilder | HomeGrown

Shantanu Das

A new group exhibition at Chemould Colaba, titled ‘Hearts on Fire’, features thirteen artists. Curated by Sarica Robyn Balsari, the exhibition features photography that focuses on the nature of Parsi identity, exploring the diverse ways in which the Parsi community has been represented across visual media. It puts a specific emphasis on contemporary images juxtaposed with shifting narratives of memory, history, and belonging. The Parsi identity is recorded as unfinished and emerging, with the photographs being cast as a multitude of future possibilities.

Image Courtesy: (L) Minnie Mama, Navroz Day by Divya Cowasji; Shantanu Das (R)

Rejecting the idea of a singular Parsi identity, the exhibit defines new paths to a Parsi identity that contains multitudes. Inspired by Barthes’ suggestion that cameras are ‘clocks for seeing’, which means to turn back time using photographs, and T.S Eliot’s 1936 poem, ‘Burnt Norton’, the exhibition juxtaposes traditional portraits with contemporary photographs. The intersections of past and future Parsi identities, along with the convergence of history and the contemporary, show off the distinctive visual culture of the community. The domestic and religious spheres of the baug and the agiary, are interspersed with the symbolic landscape of Udvada in Gujarat — the resting place of the Atash Behram, the eternally burning fire.

The curator Sarica Robyn Balsari, says that the choice to include both Parsi and non-Parsi photographers was a conscious one, explaining, “The photos range from staged portraits to candid moments and cinematic stylisation, the distinct methodologies, and backgrounds of the artists themselves offer a powerful lens for observing Parsi identity.”

“Our hope is that viewers will come away from the show with a sense of the multifaceted and layered aspects of identity that are in a continual process of becoming. Our exhibition is about celebrating identity in all its myriad forms and its contradictions. As part of that purpose, we have intentionally juxtaposed various images from portraits and candid photographs to video reels and music videos, across different time periods to disrupt traditional binaries of the past and present, history and the contemporary.”

— – Sarica Robyn Balsari

Image Courtesy: (L) Ardeshir And Khorshed By Sunhil Sippy; Porus Vimadalal (R)

The show runs from the 10th of September to the 15th of October 2022 at Chemould Colaba. The gallery is an extension of Chemould Prescott, which supports breakthrough young artists at the start of their careers. So in addition to featuring iconic Parsi photographers like Porus Vimadalal and Sooni Taraporevala, the exhibition also throws light on breakthrough photographers Iyanah Bativala and Divya Cowasji.

The show is a must-visit for anyone wanting to learn more about the visual and historical aspects of the community. It is the hope of the curator that people will engage with and reflect on Parsi photographic practice through the kaleidoscopic view of the past, present, and future. The works present diverse forms rife with complexities, traversing linguistic, geographical, and social borders.

In a corner at Bikaner House at the Art & Soul, Art of India exhibition is a stellar sculpture of a horse’s head.Entitled Mustang Sally it is a mesmerising portrait of a horse in the hands of a brilliant architect turned sculptor Arzan Khambatta.

Khambhatta a Mumbai dweller has been creating sculptures with scrap metal and this one is a beauty to behold. Khambhatta is one who amalgamates his artistic pursuits with his sense of social responsibilities. Stylistically, he chooses to apply the techniques of Western Realism to modern media, widening the pictorial possibilities created by a  painterly lexicon. Khambatta has two sculptures in this show by Times of India.The second work is a small Buddha head with a sapling. Created in bronze this one too is a work that draws in the viewer’s gaze.

Article by Uma Nair | TOI

Translating metal

To him, the form that he translates in metal is  the most crucial aspect of creating his lingua franca and sculpture for him is  not  an independent element seeking its own amusement and prominence. Instead, sculpture for him is  one of the tools of expression like charcoal sketches and oil paintings. Unbounded by the formalities of the medium he uses we see a remarkable attention to detail, the marble for the eye, the twisted metal for the mane and Khambhatta’s  ultimate artistic vision that exhibits the  spirit by freely utilizing and mixing all the Western and oriental  technical characteristics and materials.

Rarity of subject

When you stand and study both these images you know that of the traditional techniques, one should preserve the outstanding ones, inherit the disappearing ones, change the inadequate ones, and infuse the adaptable world techniques into one’s work.Khambatta treats both subjects with great sensitivity and fervour.The Buddha head is one of grace and gravitas.

Savouring beauty within

This Buddha is a work to savour and contemplate upon.The sapling is a testimony to Buddha’s love for the bamboo grove he would inhabit for meditation.What makes for great quality in a Buddhist sculpture is based on a number of things, including the stylistic modelling of the figure, the rarity of the subject, and the skill of the sculptor. At the end of the day, people all over the world, are buying Buddhist sculptures because they are beautiful and well made.

Khambatta says: ” The Buddha. Is a bronze cast work showing him look into the distance. The simplistic tree ascertains “life”

The divine and life itself form the circle of life.”

This work brings alive many facets. Many collectors are drawn to the religious components of the objects, others appreciate the rich history of more than 2,000 years of Buddhist art. This sculpture endorses earlier  periods, it recalls how artisans and theologians have delved deeper and deeper into the nature of Buddhism, coming up with new ways to think about the principles of Buddha’s teachings.

The resultant esoteric form, of the Buddha head  reflected in the diversity of Buddhist idioms, offers countless avenues for study and appreciation.The sapling tells us that man and nature belong to the thread of harmonic existence.

Equine imagery

The second work of the horse’s head offers yet another subject for reflection. You know that Khambhatta is conscious of the symbolism that the subject carried. Arguably the beauty of horses goes hand in hand with their cultural meaning. We see that Khambhatta has also been influenced by equine images and unconsciously recalls to our minds a spanning from Paleolithic art to the Elgin marbles, paintings by Uccello and Picasso.As subject horses have always been in fashion and spawns collectors world over.

“I have always loved horses for their sheer grace and power,”says Khambatta who came for the inauguration to Delhi. ” The most aesthetic of beasts, l love crafting them in various materials. Iron, copper, wood, bronze, resin etc. the metal horse here in the show has got light blue glass eyes and I call her MUSTANG SALLY.”

The art of the horse comprises recalling horse images in art  from antiquity to present day. This sculpture makes us think of how horses were often utilised for warfare and labour whereas today they are more likely to be owned for pleasure. We think of the great Tim Janis and his drone images of wild horses roaming the pastures and mountains. We are looking to get closer to animals at a time when we have actually never been more separated from them. Encouraging debate around these ideas is central to this work.

[Images: Shazid Chauhan]

Within the intricate tapestry of India’s history, one finds the compelling narrative of the Parsis, a community whose origins trace back to Persia, or modern-day Iran. The community traces its history in the region to the 8th century when seeking refuge from religious persecution, they embarked on an arduous journey to India’s western shores. Despite their modest numbers, both in the past and present, the Parsis have built an enduring legacy, celebrated for their significant contributions to diverse facets of Indian society and their profound cultural imprint on the nation.

Article by by Vahishtai Ghosh |Artshelp

An old Parsi couple in a Gujarati town. Photo by Porus Vimadalal. ‌ ‌

While their legacy in India is indeed illustrious, the Parsis are also celebrated for their idiosyncrasies and peculiarities, or unique quirks which they wear with pride. Amongst these, it was a particular element of Parsiness that caught the eye of the dynamic photographer-stylist duo and couple, Porus Vimadalal and Prayag Menon — their noses. It is this particular and peculiar physical feature that takes center stage in the pair’s photographic endeavour — The Parsi Nose Project — a creative venture that serves as an ode to a delightful source of playful recognition and endearment within the Parsi community.

Hoshang Karkaria, an older community member for The Parsi Nose Project. Photo by Porus Vimadalal.

At first glance, The Parsi Nose Project may seem rather enigmatic to people outside the community, but its origins, like its subject matter, are deeply quotidian. ​The project was born during a casual dinner conversation with friends over wine. Vimadalal, a Parsi himself, was fascinated by the idea of documenting a feature that drew so much attention to him as well as his Parsi friends. “It was meant to be a very personal project, something I just wanted to do. I thought it was a great idea, because nobody really thinks about it too much. We all joke about the Parsi nose. You know if you’re a Parsi growing up, you’ve probably heard jokes about it. People going ‘are you Parsi by any chance?’, when they see your nose. It’s something that I wanted to capture.”

In their playful celebration of the Parsis and their vibrant culture, Vimadalal and Menon inadvertently shine a spotlight on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, which champions inclusive societies. As a dwindling minority, the Parsi community’s portrayal in the project serves as more than just a cultural record; it is a significant stride towards raising awareness about their unique heritage, their contemporary challenges, and ultimately, honoring their enduring legacy.

The duo began by documenting a few people they knew, but the project gained significant momentum when Vimadalal shared an Instagram story calling for Parsis above the age of 18 to participate. “I received over a hundred messages in a day after people shared the story”, said Vimadalal. “Even those who don’t follow me reached out, saying they heard about the project through friends. The response exceeded my expectations.”

Delraaz Bunshah for The Parsi Nose Project. Photo by Porus Vimadalal.‌ ‌

Vimadalal’s creative process for the project involved a dialogue about its intentions, as well the overall composition of the portraits he and his partner were setting out to capture. “The images weren’t just meant to convey humor, but rather a portrait open to interpretation. They capture both humor and emotion, with the focus solely on the face. My idea was to photograph people as they are, emphasizing the essence of the face and how the nose seamlessly belongs within it, rather than standing out. Initially, we debated whether to photograph just the nose or the entire face, and we decided it should indeed be the whole face.”

It was perhaps this creative decision that imbued a sense of closeness and relatability into Vimadalal’s images. The project went on to receive a positive response from both the Parsi community and the wider public, with coverage in newspapers, a radio show, and even Vogue India. This attention sparked conversations about diversity, representation in art, and cultural appreciation. It also transformed into a platform for people to confront insecurities about their noses and embrace their unique features, also fostering a space that encouraged affirmative conversations around them.

According to Vimadalal, “it opened up conversations about beauty in general, and people started seeing themselves differently after viewing their portraits. For many subjects, it positively transformed their relationship, with themselves. Especially considering the beauty standards prevalent in today’s media-saturated world. It was very grounding, even for me personally.”

Farshogar Vazifdar for The Parsi Nose Project. Photo by Porus Vimadalal.

While this project is rooted in the exploration of a seemingly mundane physical characteristic, its visuals are captivating. Vimadalal employs his keen photographic skills to capture the Parsi nose in all its glory. Through careful composition and lighting, his black and white portraits highlight the intricate contours and individuality of each nose, reminding their audience that even the most innocuous aspects of human existence carry profound stories. What sets The Parsi Nose Project apart is its ability to transcend depictions of the nose from the realm of mere aesthetics. Each photograph captures the individuality of their subjects, whilst simultaneously breathing life into the historical and cultural narratives of the Parsi community

The Parsi Nose Project, conceived and executed by Porus Vimadalal and Prayag Menon, is a remarkable artistic journey that redefines the boundaries of cultural expression. Through the lens of photography, it not only captures the very material physicality of the Parsi nose, but also immortalizes the conceptually rich narratives of a community that has played a vital role in shaping the cultural tapestry of India. This project reminds us that art, in its myriad forms, has the power to connect us with our roots, our history, and our shared humanity. It is a testament to the way in which art can capture the soul of a community.

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Vahishtai Ghosh

Vahishtai, a Mumbai native, holds an MPhil in Transnational, Global & Spatial History from St. Andrews, Scotland. They’re passionate about the arts’ potential to drive social change and commentary.

‘Pakistan’s Museum of Food’ is the largest and most comprehensive exploration of Pakistani cuisine online, featuring over 9000 Images, 90 videos and 100 stories that capture the vibrant culinary tapestry of Pakistan’s five provinces and beyond. This project aims to preserve and celebrate the culture and heritage of Pakistani food, as well as to document its dynamic evolution and progression. We hope that this project will inspire people to explore, appreciate, and enjoy the vibrant culinary culture, lineage and food practices of Pakistan, as well as to contribute their own stories and recipes to this living narrative.

You can see the entire exhibit here: https://artsandculture.google.com/project/flavors-of-pakistan

The special section titled

Unveiling Pakistan’s Parsi Culinary Traditions

Parsi heritage dishes from Karachi

can be seen here https://artsandculture.google.com/story/yQVho4mwu8y8_Q

The Parsi Community of Pakistan

Dwelling primarily in Karachi, the Parsis of Pakistan carry the legacy of their Persian ancestors who embarked on a journey to Medieval India. Although their community is small in numbers, their impact on Pakistan’s trajectory post-partition has been profound.