Curated by Priyanka Mathew

Artists: Joshua Kristal, Micheal Toolan, Steven Richter, Steve Fisher, Alan McIntyre Smith,
Kathryn Myers, Elliott Kaufman, Sasha Bezzubov/Jessica Sucher, Mandy Vahabzadeh.

Curator’s Statement:
  
The 'Jewel in the Imperial Crown', India has long been looked upon with the yearning through the eyes of those who don't inhabit it. Its journey has been quite incredible. Its landscape has seen transition from battlegrounds of ancient kingdoms into to a feudal colonial entity and its expression hence into modern India. It's most recent transition has felt particularly spectacular. The country is living through a defining moment of generational change. We have seen the rise of India's global stature due to the industry of its citizenry and their graduation into a self-realized body artistically, spiritually, politically and economically. Yet within this large transformation, we see deep and unshakable links to its antiquity as well as a remarkable ability of these connections to co-exist with change, in whatever manner that confronts it.

Travelers have come from far with heightened fascination to explore their understanding of India. Photographers coming to India have had a particularly rich and pedigreed past. The country has been the object of intense photographic documentation starting with the early black and white portrait photography by which the British Raj captured its 'Jewel' for their consciousness. In 1947, Henri Cartier-Bresson first visited India. He appeared at that stunning moment in the country's political history of its transition into a free democracy, the passage punctured by the violence and agony of partition. He captured India's multiplicities, the turmoil of the moment, the beauty of the land and the complexity of its people and contributed those images to the historic set of pictorials that has come to represent his body of work.

'Through the Eyes of Others: Photographs of India' is an exhibition bringing together a group of photographers who have felt the calling of India and have traveled to document their fascinations with the country. In her essay " Indian Contemporary Photography: A new visual experience" Gayatri Sinha notes about the medium, "In many instances the artist engagement with photography appears to be determined not by the long tradition of pictorials or feisty photojournalism, as much as the medium's potential for evocation". Nowhere is this truer than in the endeavor to capture India through photographs. Via their lenses these photographers have embarked on that piteous search for "the truth" about India. It's a search for an essence that has seduced and intoxicated so many. What has come together is a body of socially engaged photography that lends itself as a study of the connections to an agelessness co-existing in a contemporary landscape. They have sampled India's diversity as well captured an abundant depth and spirit. The collection of photographs encourages moments for pause for both people; those call it their native land as well as those who might have never been. It serves as a call to re-appreciate complexities and re-examine context. In some ways the body of work reminds us that the prevailing view of India will always be romantic as is illustrated in the tender gazes that unite behind these frames. - Priyanka Mathew.