“The Indian photographer Homai Vyarawalla, who died in January at 98, spoke many times, with undiminished regret, of two opportunities missed,†Holland Cotter wrote in The New York Times.
While two crucial moments in India's modern history, the assassination of Mohandas K. Gandhi and the immersion of his ashes in Allahabad, “eluded her†Mr. Cotter wrote, “many, many others did not.†That much is clear from “‘Candid: The Lens and Life of Homai Vyarawalla,' a small, evocative, event-filled retrospective of her work at the Rubin Museum of Art,†he wrote.
The exhibition showcasing the photographer's timeless work, will continue through Jan. 13 next year in New York City.
Of course public history was - still is - primarily staged by men. And the saga preserved in Ms. Vyarawalla's pictures is a cavalcade of patriarchy. It begins with Gandhi - called “ Bapu,†“father,†by his devotees - and continues with Nehru and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Lined up behind them is a string of more- and less-calculating visitors: Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first American president to set foot in India; Ho Chi Minh, the president of North Vietnam; Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union; the Shah of Iran; and the young Dalai Lama, seen in a short, tense 1956 encounter the with the Chinese prime minister, Zhou Enlai.
All these men were power players, many of them responsible for the snarled and explosive state of global politics then and now. Ms. Vyarawalla views them neutrally. She once said that being dependent for a living on the gigs that came her way, she couldn't afford to have political convictions, to look with a critical eye.
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