PHOTOINK is pleased to present MORE LIGHT, Vintage photographs by R. R. Bharadwaj, from the late 1930s.

A relatively forgotten, yet path-breaking pictorialist, Ruliaram Roopchand Bharadwaj was born in 1902 in Khad, a village in Himachal Pradesh near Bhakra Nangal. Having completed his schooling in the village, he moved to Lahore. In 1922, he joined the Mayo School of Art, where he trained extensively in photography. Within a year of joining the institution, he was making a modest living taking photographs at the Lahore Museum. From 1925 to 1931, Bharadwaj joined the Archaeological Survey of India and travelled the country to document various sites, including Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, and the Ajanta caves. His Ajanta photographs were published in a book titled, Ajanta authored by Mulk Raj Anand (publisher, McGraw-Hill Inc., US, 1971).

In 1934, Bharadwaj began a six-year association with Kodak, which again allowed him to travel across India to demonstrate Kodak products. Within three years he became the first Asian to be awarded the Kodak Eastman Gold Medal. Bharadwaj set up his first photography studio in Mussoorie in 1942 where he refined his portraiture style and darkroom practice. Following India’s independence in 1947, he moved to Bombay, and set up a studio with the assistance of Lala Kailashpat Singhania, as the city had become a thriving hub for photographers seeking artistic recognition.

Bombay was home to several photographic societies like Photographic Society of Bombay (1854), Bombay Amateur Photographic Society (1886), and in 1932, Camera Pictorialists of Bombay was instituted, to build upon the work of pioneering pictorialists such as Shapoor N. Bhedwar, Jehangir S. Taraporewala, among others. The encouragement shown by the two leading Fine Art Societies of India – Simla and Bombay, had brought Pictorialism into focus again. A handful of talented photographers, such as R.R. Bharadwaj, took this movement forward building upon the ideals of Pictorialism as it had originated in the west in the late 19^th and early 20^th century by masters such as F. Holland Day, Clarence F. White, Alfred Stieglitz and Constant Puyo. Unfortunately, for most of the Indian pictorialists, their desire to see the photographic print recognized as an art form, capable of an artistic statement similar to painting or sculpture remained unrealized in their lifetime.

Bharadwaj’s photographic oeuvre was distinguished by an unwavering adherence to the pictorial and picturesque and he produced idealized and ethereal views of the Indian countryside. When directing his camera at the sky, Bharadwaj displayed uncommon mastery in controlling natural light to create moody, atmospheric photographs of clouds, trees and plants. Further, in the darkroom, he used special toning formulae to emphasize the print’s tonality and painterly aspects. Of the few surviving albums, the one about the Garhwal Himalayas stands out for its sequence of photographs—sweeping landscapes, some made at 20,000 feet interspersed by smaller, more detailed compositions of flora and fauna—is a stunning presentation of the grand mountains.

This exhibition is a small tribute to R.R. Bharadwaj, who passed away in 1986 in relative obscurity, and hopes to ignite interest in this remarkable pictorialist, through his rare and beautiful vintage prints.