A trite statement photographs are documented images. Unlike imagism, photography doesn`t necessarily aim at capturing a certain image with clarity or without any distortions. A photographer takes a picture to bring a moving moment to inertia in such a way that even its inertness represents a shift in time and space. Or sometimes the purpose can be otherwise to create stillness in life`s ungraspable momentum. In both cases the result, if the camera-clicker is an artist at heart, is indelible.
Pedro Meyer is a Mexican who is known all over the world for his inventive camerawork — and he is an artist at heart. If you`re not anti-technology, you would appreciate the fact that Meyer`s dexterously juxtaposes documentary stills with digital imaging. And if you are a purist, you would liken digital imaging in photography to the use of CGIs (computer generated images) in moviemaking, and always prefer The Godfather to Sin city. No harm in that. But never compare apples with oranges. Like life, art is a progression.
These days an exhibition entitled `Heresies` is on at The Second Floor, Karachi, covering no less than four decades of Meyer`s works. The display took off in 60 countries at the same time in the month of October, and will carry on for six weeks at The Second Floor, with a change in the exhibited pictures every two weeks.
When you look at Meyer`s works, what strikes you instantly is his ability to impart a dream-like (if not overtly surrealistic) touch to his subjects, but in a readily identifiable manner. This is exactly what all genres of visual art do transport the viewer into that very realm from where the artist had begun his creative journey.
Who doesn`t dream? Who doesn`t have nightmares? But a worthy artist gives tongue to your unsaid thoughts or makes tangible the things that you had only once imagined — wished or feared.
The first and second group of photos at the exhibition carried some remarkable pieces — `Explosion of the green chairs`, `Emotional crisis` and `The pink raincoat` among them.
These pictures primarily do two things (1) they make you acknowledge how fiction can be ingeniously metamorphosed into fact giving it a wonderful air of believability, or how fact can be transformed into a fictitious business, but with a cathartic feel; and (2) it gives an insight into the artist`s mind, that is, he wants everybody to see the world through his prism.
Going through Czech writer Milan Kundera`s books, you acknowledge how a confluence of philosophy, eroticism
and politics can be achieved. Pedro Meyer`s images, though at times they may seem contextually one-dimensional, appear to be a multitude of reflections. If this sounds unreal, go and see them.
