A Photography Exhibition Looks at Gandhi’s Assassination Through a New Lens
New Delhi: A photography exhibition opening on October 2 in Delhi explores the curious histories behind the most iconic photographs of M.K. Gandhi. Titled ‘The Light Has Gone Out — Photography and Gandhi’s Assassination’, the exhibition is a culmination of 20 years of research by co-curator Ram Rahman.
The project features unpublished photos by French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, rare photos from Cartier-Bresson’s original Magnum press prints, writings from Nayantara Sahgal and newspaper clippings on Gandhi’s assassination.
Rahman’s interest in this project sparked years ago when he found the Life magazine issue on Gandhi’s assassination — a multipage tribute with the famous photo of Gandhi and his spinning wheel by Margaret Bourke-White featured at the top.
He then became fascinated by the history uncovered by former journalist and historian Claude Cookman, who researched the professional relationship between Bourke-White and Cartier-Bresson, their varying approaches and their challenges while photographing Gandhi.
In his exhibition, Rahman will use Cookman’s research to tell the stories that happened behind the photos. These stories explain how Bourke-White’s use of flash stopped her from getting the perfect photo at Gandhi’s death and the real story behind Cartier-Bresson’s famous photo of the cremation grounds during Gandhi’s funeral.
To build on the photos themselves, co-curator and art historian Saarthak Singh compiled newspapers and archived texts for the project.
“We're putting up lots of newspapers from that time in different languages — English, Hindi, Urdu — which covered that moment of the killing,” Rahman said. “So, it's a way of looking back at a key moment in our history, but through a different lens.”
After years of research, Rahman and his team chose to release the exhibition now given current attitudes toward Gandhi’s assassination. In the past few years, Gandhi’s assassination has become a polarising historical event, with some Hindu nationalists praising Nathuram Godse and NCERT deleting texts relating to the assassination in school textbooks.
“It's a way of reminding people of who killed Gandhi and why, because history is being re-written, re-interpreted in a very shallow manner,” Rahman said. “And we thought that this is a good way of bringing some kind of memory, particularly to the younger generation, which doesn't know a lot of this history.”
‘The Light Has Gone Out — Photography and Gandhi’s Assassination’ will be open to the public from October 2 to October 21 at Jawahar Bhawan in Delhi. Rahman said he has designed it as a travelling exhibition and hopes it can be displayed in other parts of the country going forward.
Yasmeen Saadi is an intern at The Wire.
This article went live on October second, two thousand twenty three, at fifty-seven minutes past ten in the morning.The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
