New Delhi

Pablo Bartholomew
3–24 September 2016
PRESS RELEASE Press Release.

Pablo Bartholomew is an accomplished photographer who, over a career spanning forty years, has documented
societies in conflict and transition around the world while also recording the intimate details of his own generation
maturing in a changing India. Nature Morte is pleased to present a new body of work by the photographer which
expands his repertoire substantially. First exhibited as part of the Dhaka Art Summit in February 2016, “Memento Mori”
ventures into both abstraction and conceptualism and can be seen as a meditation on both time and loss.

As keeper of both his father’s oeuvre of over 17,000 negatives as well as his own practice (the consequence of a four-
decade-long engagement with photography) Bartholomew has been forced to assume the role of archivist. In 1986 he
was commissioned by National Geographic to photograph the monumental effort of 15,000 Bangladeshi men who had
to physically close the mouth of the Feni River to control flooding and create a freshwater reservoir for irrigation over a
seven-hour intertidal marathon, thus building the largest dam in the country. Bartholomew had stored the Kodachrome
slides from the assignment in a box on the topmost shelf of one of the cupboards in his apartment. In 2014, he detected
the aftermath of a leak that had its source in the apartment upstairs that had rendered the area damp and humid. He
climbed a ladder to investigate and was horrified to discover that these original slides had been feasted on by termites
that had colonized the cardboard box. The images they had borne had become abstract and unrecognizable; nature
seems to have interceded to create entirely new works of art.

“Memento Mori” is Bartholomew’s attempt at resurrecting the corpses of his images, albeit fully conscious of their
irreversible state of mutation. In enlarging and presenting these ruins, he restores the intimacy and immediacy of their
contents while exposing the futility of the human attempt at preservation. In the exhibition of these images,
Bartholomew extends the scope of the series to present visual meditations on the fragility of material things and our
own selves.

Born in New Delhi in 1955, Pablo Bartholomew is a self-taught photographer who started taking pictures in the
documentary tradition in his early teens. His first solo exhibitions were at the Art Heritage Gallery, New Delhi in 1979 and
the Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai in 1980. Subsequently he has had over 30 solo shows of his work in galleries and
museums around the world and has participated in the most important festivals of photography. For his series on
morphine addicts, created at age 19, he was awarded First Prize for Photo Stories by the Press Institute of India and in
1976 by the World Press Photo. In 1985 he won the World Press Photo Picture of the Year award for his iconic image of the
burial of a child victim of the Bhopal gas tragedy. His photographs have been published in The New York Times, Time,
Life, National Geographic, Figaro Magazine, Paris Match, The Guardian, The Observer Magazine, and other international
newspapers and periodicals. Bartholomew was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2013 for his
contributions to photography. In 2014 he was conferred with the Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the
French Government.

For further details on this exhibition please see www.naturemorte.com/exhibitions/mementomori

Pablo Bartholomew
Two Boys
Archival Giclee Print
134×89cm (53×35")
Pablo Bartholomew
Farmer with Spider
Archival Giclee Print
89×134cm (35×53")
Pablo Bartholomew
Boy and Haystack
Archival Giclee Print
89×134cm (35×53")
Pablo Bartholomew
Boy and Haystack II
Archival Giclee Print
89×134cm (35×53")
Pablo Bartholomew
Walking Man
Archival Giclee Print
89×59cm (35×23")
Pablo Bartholomew
Horse Head and Flower
Archival Giclee Print
89×134cm (35×53")
Pablo Bartholomew
Woman with Baskets
Archival Giclee Print
89×134cm (35×53")
Pablo Bartholomew
Woman with Basket on her Head

89×134cm (35×53")
Pablo Bartholomew
White Veiled Woman and Boy
Archival Giclee Print
89×134cm (35×53")
Pablo Bartholomew
Two Men in a Blob
Archival Giclee Print
89×59cm (35×23")
Pablo Bartholomew
Three Crosses
Archival Giclee Print
89×59cm (35×23")
Pablo Bartholomew
Ship
Archival Giclee Print
134×89cm (53×35")
Pablo Bartholomew
Passengers on Bus Roof
Archival Giclee Print
134×89cm (53×35")
Pablo Bartholomew
Multi Coloured Blob II
Archival Giclee Print
89×59cm (35×23")
Pablo Bartholomew
Multi Coloured Blob
Archival Giclee Print
134×89cm (53×35")
Pablo Bartholomew
Men by the River
Archival Giclee Print
134×89cm (53×35")
Pablo Bartholomew
Man with Goat
Archival Giclee Print
134×89cm (53×35")
Pablo Bartholomew
Head of a Boy
Archival Giclee Print
134×89cm (53×35")
Pablo Bartholomew
Ferry Boat with Trucks
Archival Giclee Print
134×89cm (53×35")
Pablo Bartholomew
Buses exiting a Ferry
Archival Giclee Print
89×59cm (35×23")
Pablo Bartholomew
Bus and Car on Ferry
Archival Giclee Print
89×59cm (35×23")
Pablo Bartholomew
Bullock Carts with Hay
Archival Giclee Print
89×59cm (35×23")
Pablo Bartholomew
Bullock Carts in a Blob
Archival Giclee Print
89×59cm (35×23")
Pablo Bartholomew
Boy with Sheep
Archival Giclee Print
134×89cm (53×35")
Pablo Bartholomew
Boy with Fishing Gear
Archival Giclee Print
89×59cm (35×23")
Pablo Bartholomew
Boy with Baskets
Archival Giclee Print
89×59cm (35×23")
Pablo Bartholomew
Boat being Loaded
Archival Giclee Print
89×59cm (35×23")
Pablo Bartholomew
Arial View from a Biplane
Archival Giclee Print
89×59cm (35×23")
Pablo Bartholomew
Arial Blob
Archival Giclee Print
89×59cm (35×23")
Pablo Bartholomew
Animal-like Blob
Archival Giclee Print
89×59cm (35×23")
Pablo Bartholomew
Woman in Riding Gear
Archival Giclee Print
165×110cm (65×43")
Pablo Bartholomew
Sad Woman
Archival Giclee Print
165×110cm (65×43")
Pablo Bartholomew
Head of a Boy
Archival Giclee Print
134×89cm (53×35")
Pablo Bartholomew
Ship
Archival Giclee Print
134×89cm (53×35")
Pablo Bartholomew
Passengers on Bus Roof
Archival Giclee Print
134×89cm (53×35")
Pablo Bartholomew
Men by the River
Archival Giclee Print
134×89cm (53×35")
Pablo Bartholomew
Man with Goat
Archival Giclee Print
134×89cm (53×35")
A-1, Neeti Bagh Founded in New York's East Village in 1982 and closed in 1988, Peter Nagy revived Nature Morte in New Delhi in 1997 as a
New Delhi-110049 commercial gallery and a curatorial experiment. Since then, Nature Morte has become synonymous in India with
India
+91 11 40687117  challenging and experimental forms of art; championing conceptual, lens-based, and installation genres and
Mon–Sat 10 am–6 pm representing a generation of Indian artists who have gone on to international exposure. The gallery has been located in
its multi-level space in Neeti Bagh, central south Delhi, since December 2003. In addition, the gallery has maintained
 
multiple branches in various locations: Berlin (2008-2014), Calcutta (BosePacia Kolkata 2006-2009), and at the Oberoi
For general queries: info@naturemorte.com Gurgaon hotel (2011-2014). Formerly partnered with the BosePacia Gallery in New York, in 2013 Aparajita Jain became the
For press images and show information: co-director of Nature Morte.
keith@naturemorte.com
Nature Morte was the first gallery from India to be included in the most important international art fairs (staring with
www.naturemorte.com
info@naturemorte.com The Armory Show in New York in 2005) and has participated in Art Basel, Fiac Paris, Art Basel Miami Beach, Paris Photo,
Art Dubai, Tokyo Art Fair, Art Basel Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi Art Fair, Frieze New York, among others. Nature Morte has also
organized projects and exhibitions with international artists coming to India and combining their works with those of
Indian artists to foster cross-cultural communications. In addition to its own programming, Nature Morte has
collaborated with institutions in India such as the British Council, the Alliance Francais, the Sanskriti Foundation, the
India International Centre, the India Habitat Centre, Max Mueller Bhavan, the Italian Cultural Center, Khoj International
Artists Association, the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, and the National Gallery of Modern Art in both New Delhi and
Mumbai. Today, Nature Morte represents such well-known artists as Subodh Gupta, Jitish Kallat, Anita Dube, Mithu Sen,
Bharti Kher, Imran Qureshi, Mona Rai, Pushpamala N., Seher Shah, Thukral & Tagra, Raqs Media Collective, and Asim
Waqif, as well as others.