DEEPTI NAVAL’S SHOW
FIRST CITY, NEW DELHI – NOV 1998
 
   

From star-gazing to photography, Deepti Naval has affected the switch from actress to lens woman with felicity. “In search of Another Sky,” her exhibition of colored photographs at Gallery Escape which began in Delhi this week, documents a personal journey through this rugged and difficult terrain. There is a freshness and curiosity in the manner in which she draws out the contrast between the fragility of the farmer’s cottage and the stolidity of the monastery that has weathered so many centuries.

As a photographer she has not documented Ladakh of the coffee table book, as the last bastion of Mahayana Buddhism, the land of ochre- clothed monks with their elaborate prayer rituals. It is a much more humble vision, which captures small groups at study or prayer. The landscape itself, magnificent in its stark splendor and the extremely poignant conditions of eking out a living there are on view.

Deepti exploits the basic colours of the landscape which are strongly etched against the near monochromatic snow-clad mountains, to record a more personal, moving experience.