Views from Kashmir

A new exhibition spotlights the life, times and photography of a man who was obsessed with Kashmir Valley.

Don't bother to read any accounts of British travellers to the Kashmir valley if you're planning a trip there. You'll be fooled into believing that the Bund on river Jhelum is still the fashionable quarter of the city.

It's not. It used to be, once upon a time, but the march of time and the local predilection for pulling down any structure over 50 years old and erecting glass and marble structures in its place has effectively sounded the death knell for what was undoubtedly a very charming location.

Shaded by giant chinars, and approached by flights of limestone steps, there's just one little corner that clings stubbornly to the past. It's just beyond the black and white half-timbered façade of the old Grindlays Bank, now J & K Bank.

The quaint row of 90-year-old double-storeyed stone and timber shops houses a couple of the best-known handicraft merchants in the Valley and the Srinagar branch of Mahatta's.

When Mahatta's started operations in 1912, it was located in a houseboat off the present location. By 1918, it had moved to the present location, presided over by the three Mehta brothers, of whom R C Mehta was always the photographer, the other brothers handling the business aspect of running the studio.

British residents of Srinagar, members of the royal family of Kashmir and prominent citizens would come there to have their portraits taken.

By the 1950s the branches in Rawalpindi and Gulmarg had closed, and the one in Delhi had opened, leaving R C Mehta alone to run the Srinagar branch. Each branch was called Mahatta to help the British, who couldn't pronounce the brothers' surname: Mehta.

R C Mehta discovered that the postcards he sold in his shop was a rewarding business in their own right, and soon took to walking and driving around the city in search of the perfect postcard shot.

Says grandson Dushyant Mehta, "By the time I grew up, there was scarcely a houseboat on the Dal Lake that he hadn't shot. They were all sold as postcards in the shop."

R C Mehta travelled all over the valley shooting, and one gets the distinct impression that it had become a passion for him, the commercial angle being only incidental.

Two aspects are important. First that wherever he went, he took the sensibility of a studio portraitist with him. His views don't glorify poverty, or impinge on the private thoughts and lives of his subjects. Second, he was meticulous in keeping records.

Continues Dushyant Mehta, "We have found separate folders for test prints of his studio subjects and confirmed prints. They have lain undisturbed over the decades."

Registers for appointments, pigeonholes for negatives, all the tools of his trade: retouching brushes and cameras that include bulky 120 mm panoramic lenses with 2B converters "" all have lain behind glass counters in the shop on the Bund.

That's when his grandsons, Hemant and Dushyant Mehta, promoters of Indiapicture.com, a website featuring the work of 70 photographers, decided to exhibit his works. It was a mammoth task, as easy as pie and excruciatingly difficult in turns.

"The wealth of material on various subjects "" studio portraits, landscapes, the royal family, political personalities of the day and ordinary people going about their daily tasks made it simple," says Hemant Mehta. What made it extraordinarily difficult was choosing not so much which images to include, but which to leave out.

What has emerged is a monumental testimony of the life and times of one man: R C Mehta. For the exhibition not only showcases his works, but also the cameras and photographic accessories he worked with.

What makes the exhibition unique is the sheer wealth of documentary evidence of Kashmir as he saw it, coupled with his work as a studio portraitist.

To have a complete collection, negatives and all, of over 7,000 images dating principally from 1935 to 1965 is rare indeed. That the works depicted have the sheer range of subjects that they do is fortuitous indeed.

To be sure, there are a handful of old photography studios in corners of the country that have existed since the days of the Raj. Some of their owners may even have shot images independently for their own pleasure. R C Mehta's work, however, is distinguished by the sheer sweep of its oeuvre.

As Dushyant Mehta says, "He took the sensibility of a table top photographer with him when he was shooting outdoors."

His images were never random: before he set off from the studio with his dark suit and a neatly furled umbrella that his grandsons associate with him to this day, he knew exactly the kind of image he wanted, and he knew how to get it." The collection is a treasure trove for the collector and the photo enthusiast alike.

R C Mehta's Kashmir Views is on from June 2-8 at Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, from 10 am to 7 pm daily. All the images are on sale.