On the face of it, this is an exhibition of photographs from and about two great Eastern powers, India and Iran. On the one hand, by a Western photographer who has traveled in the East and on the other an Eastern photographer who resides in the West.
However, what Peter Gonda and Kamal have in common is not the fact that their itineraries have taken them in one direction or another, but rather that of a shared sensibility. They take pains to see the world as it actually is and not merely as we would wish it to be. This implies not a reportorial eye at work, for they are not photojournalists, and their lenses never purport to be objective (as no lens can ever be); rather, they are united in determined patience and practiced timing, waiting for and seeking out what their mutual major influence – Henri Cartier-Bresson, called 'The decisive moment'.
This, it has been argued elsewhere and repeatedly, is the purest essence of photography, this eliciting of the mysteries of everyday life that are hidden in plain sight and available only to those who happen to glimpse them in passing or, like these two photographers, lie in wait of their inevitability.
Gonda and Kamal then, are purists in their approach. Let the instant tell the story, and let the photographer know his craft well enough to be the agent of conveyance to us that have, whether temporarily or as a result of the rushed pace of our lives, have blinded ourselves to such epiphanies.
These moments occur anywhere and everywhere; in this exhibition, they happen to occur in two vast countries that dwell in the imagination of many Westerners and can be glimpsed here anew.
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