Overview for The Romance of Red Stone: An Appreciation of Ornament on Islamic Architecture in India
Romance in Red Stone is an appreciation of architecture of Islam in India at a level removed from the formal, as articulated surface. In his photographs Yashwant Pitkar presents architecture as a feast of craftsmanship, as an enduring romance with shape and stone, in its unending variations. An architect first, then a photographer, Pitkar's images reflect his love and admiration for the buildings of Delhi, Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, which he captures in a way he knows best, up close and personal.
Pitkar's unique photographic gaze identifies with that of a Mughal miniature painter, or a Company artist, taking the viewer close to the buildings, enough to shut out the dominating forms right into the aesthetics of surface. For a visitor to these buildings, the photographs allow a return, a recollection of architecture as a phenomenon, giving a sensual experience of the visit, here is an effective feel for the infinite craft.
Pitkar's images work at a deeper philosophical level. The viewer is made aware of the inner meaning of aesthetic representation, the different ways of inducing the immeasurable, the plays of multiple superimposed levels and of patterns continue beyond the photographer's frame suggesting the infinite.
Bagchee
