DINTER FINE ART is pleased to present a solo exhibition of photographs taken in India by the Paris-based American photographer and performance artist Elizabeth Lennard.

On view will be a series of large format (41×31 inches) digital pigment prints on rag paper, as well as a series of smaller (16×20 inches) hand-painted vintage gelatin silver prints. The photographs have been augmented by a layer of color, some have been embellished with decorative borders in the style of popular Indian posters.

The images—ranging in subject matter from temples to other architectural structures, to city scenes crowded with people and animals, to deities, to a timeless way of life—present what one imagines as bustling chaos: noisy and smelly, hot and humid, in a riot of color and movement, with everpresent crowds.

In her own words:

“Tanjore, Gingee, Madurai, Tranquebar … I went to South India looking for images which would fulfill the promise conjured up by these magical sounding names. A singular forbidding lookout tower in Tanjore, a “folly” by Western standards, evokes childhood memories of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York. Tranquebar, the Danish Fort, a forgotten outpost on the Bay of Bengal, makes me want to direct an Indian version of Hamlet… The timeless “metaphysical architecture” of the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai links style concepts of the past, present and even future. This non-hierarchical and non linear view of time has been an ongoing principle in my work. Or perhaps what attracts me to sacred Hindu Architecture is simply its roots in the intersection of a circle and a square… The carved temple spires: “Gopurams”, “Shikharas” or peaks are an expression of the ancient Hindu belief that the Gods reside in the mountains. They were designed to take one away from dull and commonplace reality.”

Like a postcard received from faraway the images in this exhibition capture timeless notions of a place both real and imagined, a place travelled to and from, transmitting idyllic visions of exotic foreignness, hints of deeper meanings and mysteries, giving way to a myriad of reflections…

Many of these photographs were first exhibited at the Marie Victoire Poliakoff Pixi Gallery in Paris, France.