The Face by Jyoti Bhatt, a celebrated Vadodara-based printmaker and photographer whose work bridges modernist art practices with folk and tribal visual languages.
“This work was created in 1971, and in the ’70s, the Lalit Kala Akademi did not accept photography as art—only painting, printmaking, or sculpture. This image was made in a darkroom using stencils, an enlarger, and chemicals, conceived as metaphor rather than documentation. To exhibit it, I submitted the work as a silver gelatin print instead of photography. It was accepted, unnoticed for years. Much later, a critic recognised the gesture for what it was—a small, quiet trespass. I value this work for gently challenging a system that lacked the language to see it.”
Gallery: Subcontinent