Catalogue Ages of Separation exhibition, Visual Arts Gallery, India habitat Center, New Delhi
09/20/2006
Diwan Manna is known for his soulful images and is a pioneer among art photographers. He is one of the first exponents in conceptual photography in India. His artistic technique and expression is unique and has a style of its own.
Diwan combines photography with painting, body arts and acting to create works that defy definition.
He has been exhibiting extensively across Europe including France, UK, Germany and Poland for the last about 15 years and has collections with some prestigious museums and institutions of Europe. He is a recipient of National Award in Photography by the Central Lalit Kala Academy.
The present exhibition “Ages of Separation” is about his journey in search of trying to come to terms with the insidious and unrecognized forms of degradation of our sense of life and honour within ourselves as well as in others. He is not merely interested in presenting images of destruction of human goodness, courage and beauty, but tries to tap the unsuspected and as yet unrealized sources of tenderness, fortitude and humanity in us.
In the present exhibition he is showing approximately 40 large images from the series Shores of the Unknown, After the Turmoil, Alienation, Violence and Conceptual Self Portraits.
He shows us many aspects, in three successive phases, of his work. The black and white of his first work, and then the fiery contrasts of colours in his more recent work are only metaphors of eternal combat that men engage in to reach the light.
Diwan Manna reveals both his real compassion for his contemporaries as well as his admiration in front of the beauty and dignity of beings, for he knows how to affirm in his colour compositions his conviction of seeing in woman the future of the world and all its magic.
This is how Diwan Manna speaks to us and passes from social violence, precariousness of life of men and women living in the shadows like the forgotten, to the solitude of beings and their anguish. Two series of black and white photographs of technical mastery and perfect classical beauty precede here then big photographs, in intense colours, with carefully thought out portrayals that are like inner and symbolic dreams.
Life, Woman, Hope.
An encounter with these pictures is a disquieting and an empowering experience. It brings out our hidden humanness, which in fact becomes an experience of self-realization for each one of us. It opens a reservoir of fellow feeling across cultures, languages and political milieus.
In a way the experience of the exhibition recovers for us our lost humanity. We can hear the pangs within us of the humanity being reborn.
