Frozen in Time kicks off at Goethe
Peerzada Salman
KARACHI: For understandable reasons the words ‘still’ and ‘motion’ do not go together, but they have an oxymoronic association in the context of the art of dance and photography. While dance is to do with body poetics, photography is all about capturing a moment and giving it an eternal feel. The common element in both is the innate aesthetics that exists in nature. This is exactly why a photographic exhibition, which opened on Wednesday, titled ‘Frozen in Time: Photographs of Dance’ organised by the Goethe Institut, Karachi on its premises, proved an interesting spectacle.
The display does not have a particular sequence, except the fact that it starts with Andrea Esswein’s nine photos of a dancer, clad in black, with a motionless posture. It is indicative of the beginning (or the beginning of beginning) of an act.
The next group of pictures points to the ‘moving’ aspect of dance, as the subjects in them strike a pose signifying preparatory actions. The best part of the exhibition is the next bunch of photos by Benrd Uhlig. The dancers in his frames cannot be seen clearly because the images are blurred. It almost gives the impression as if the camera was de-focused. It’s not. The feeling that the photographer is striving to convey is of the kind of consuming passion that the artists have for their art. They get absorbed in it with such intensity that it may provide the viewer an idea about their performance, but not about their selves.
Agnes Noltenius shifts the mood of the exhibition with her closer examination of the bodies involved in the genre of dance with her distinct black and white photos. Bettina Stob takes it further and makes a successful attempt at capturing the movement of the dancers. This eventually leads the display to reach its climax as Joerg Reichardt grabs the images of dancers using a table as their main prop and doing the balancing bit without losing their sense of rhythm.
The show was supposed to commence on Tuesday but was delayed for a day because of the breakdown of law and order.
The exhibition will run till April 17.
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