In The Bazaar
Kamal Badhey and Gurnoor Singh
In the Bazaar includes the photographic works of Kamal Badhey and Gurnoor Singh. It is a conversation between two photographers and their long term projects Portals and Passageways and Life at Chawri, geographically located in bazaars of South Asia in Delhi and Hyderabad.
The project speaks both with and back to the idea of the bazaar as a place of chaos. Instead, the photographers’ intentions are to make sense of the places of commerce, community, and activity through the camera. The order that is created involves visually connecting with the urban landscape through walking, sometimes tentatively and sensitively as a means of understanding. It is slow connections to the moment, which may imbue the active, but also the stark stillness of memory and history within its walls. Each artist engaged with their internal chaos through making order by interacting with the bazaar. Gurnoor is thinking through Chawri’s exteriors and the outside world, while Kamal engaging in acts of reclamation through encounters with deceased ancestral spaces.
Life at Chawri
Gurnoor Singh
Chawri Bazaar- One of the oldest markets of brass, copper, and paper products. It was also the first wholesale market in Delhi. The place has held on to its essence of a traditional marketplace for years and serves as a working platform for Blacksmiths, carpenters, and other craftsmen. Most of the jobs in Chawri are labor intensive, providing work to hundreds of manual laborers daily.
Chawri Bazaar was the first place I went to with the Pinhole Photography Society for my first photowalk. The first few photowalks were just me trying to figure out my camera settings and trying to navigate the chaos of Chawri Bazaar. A few months of photowalks helped me improve my understanding of both the camera and Chawri Bazaar. Taking photographs helped me make sense of the chaos in Chawri. It helped me find order in the chaos of the place.
I never planned to make a series of the photographs that I took at the place. My reason for clicking was to practice my photography. As Chawri is a very happening place, it was really helpful in practicing my compositions and framing in street photography. My second reason
was that figuring out the chaos in Chawri was very calming to me, as it took away my attention from the constant thoughts that kept popping into my head.
In September 2022, I moved to Brighton to pursue my passion for photography. I started understanding photography as an art form. It made me realize how adding a concept or context to photographs can change the effectiveness of the photographs. Applying what I had learned during my MA, I finally decided to compile all the work I had done in Chawri Bazaar. The project about representation and exploration, of the place that helped me understand my process of thinking and working. Although I cannot take away the cultural aspect of the place, it is neither the purpose nor the focus of the project. It is about connecting with other people and connecting with the Bazaar through photography.
Website
Portals and Passageways
Kamal Badhey
PORTALS AND PASSAGEWAYS
’Katha kanchiki, manam intiki’ is a Telugu phrase used in storytelling. It means the story goes far far away, and now we are back in our homes. Portals and Passageways has roots in the mythology and storytelling of families. It is part of a collection of photographs from a re-constructed family album. The project stems from kitchen table conversations with my mother, Rathnamala Badhey. It asks viewers to piece together elements of a dormant narrative of Annam Rathnaiah and his descendents through some of the sensory feelings of returning to an ancestral space and bazaar that was home to a joint family. Rathnaiah is the oldest known ancestor of the family and built the ancestral home that has been occupied by five generations of descendents. He started a jewelry shop in the 1880s’ in the General Bazaar of Secunderabad, India. Secunderabad, located in South India was a British cantonment, with the bazaar serving the needs of the British army before decolonization. Simultaneously it became a place of commerce for Indians. Descendants of Rathnaiah still have many shops that dot the lines of the jewelry stores. Each shop is also connected to the ecosystem of the bazaar including the intimate connection with the goldsmiths, sellers and crafts people within the bazaar, reconstructing and expanding the archive.
Portals and Passageways is a collective of photographs rooted in one extended family in Secunderabad, India that was photographed and produced in 2014-2015. This iteration of the project includes new images, shown a decade later after my initial encounter with the space. The photographs serve as flashes of memory, which are stitched together and woven, allowing a narrative to be constructed. The passageway is a line that takes you through time and space, memory and story. Each photograph can be entered and traveled. The portals vary from light, fire, to emotion. Their entry can be the blackness of entering a room once familiar with the sound of Ammammas. These places and photographs are where new worlds can be found in a hand, jewel, concrete wall, or the texture of aging skin. Other portals include the reflective surface of the mirror or dust that accumulated in layers like memory. These separate images, when put together, represent a meshwork of what I saw, felt, and heard about my family.
Website
The Open Market, Unit 42 Marshalls Row
Brighton
BN1 4JU
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4-15 and 22-31 October
Monday 11:00–16:00
Tuesday 11:00–16:00
Wednesday 11:00–16:00
Thursday 11:00–16:00
Friday 11:00–16:00
Saturday 11:00–16:00