A Still Symphony: Visuals by Leena Kejriwal
India International Centre, New Delhi, India
December 6th to 12th, 2003

James Watt would have approved of her respect for the steaming kettle. Kolkata photographer Leena Kejriwal has been blessed with the unusual ability to look for character and beauty in objects often considered mundane. When she steps out with her camera, she seeks out the handsome among the humdrum and the charming among the commonplace. Nothing - however, nondescript it may be to the lay eye, escapes her attention.

That is how, in just four years since she started photography, Leena Kejriwal has emerged as one of the most promising shutterbugs. After an exhibition at the India Habitat Centre, she has been invited to show her work at the India International Centre from December 6 to 12, 2003 with artist Satish Gujral doing the honours at the inauguration.

Of Kettles and Mettles:
And Leena's work ought to be inspiration enough to keep the talk bubbling. Looking on will be her varied subjects that get a new dimension through her portrayal. She captures the warmth and comfort of an unremarkable roadside tea stall and finds poetic inspiration in a basket of eggs which bring much-needed strength to the nation's backbone who toil endlessly.

With an uncanny eye for both the symmetrical and asymmetrical, few things, however obscure their origin and however mundane their existence, escape her sharp lens. She gives still life a life of its own, making it immortal on film. It takes a perceptive eye to catch these little nuances and hold them up in an image that makes a passer-by stand by for a second take.

The Still Raaga:
Her work, triggered off by a workshop with Girish Mistry, is a modern 'trotternama', a sincere and careful documentation of life today which will surely find its place in cataloguing our life and times. Moreover, she has this unerring ability to catch the 'life' in the inanimate that makes the roads that we trundle down, come alive with a new personality, conveying her infectious joy in the little, tiny, nameless things that we pass by without a second glance. Never after will we pass a roadside stall without noticing the warmth in the charcoal embers, the comfort in the glowing naked lamp.

This is the quality that has been recognised and found recognition by The Hyatt Regency, Kolkata and Mumbai, and on the cover of the prize-winning book by Alka Saraogi, Kalikatha Via Bypass. A member of Photographers' Guild of India, her work has been showcased by The Times Journal of Photography in its April 2001 issue.

The exhibition at the India International Centre will hold up to the present capital of India the beauty and grandeur of a city celebrated for its style and stately grandeur, a city that played host to the country's administrative heads till just a century ago.

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