If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.
Don McCullin
Be Prepared for Gurdeep Dhiman’s Encounter With A Moment
Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai opened its doors for Gurdeep Dhiman’s newest show, ‘Encounter With A Moment.’ The preview, held on 18 December 2024 was inaugurated by Rishiraj Sethi; Director, Aura Art Development Pvt Ltd and Pradeep Chandra; photographer and author. The show will be on view until 24th December 2024.
Analysing Gurdeep Dhiman’s Photography
Gurdeep Dhiman’s photography is a projecting medium to deliver ineffable and untold stories, sentiments, and experiences. Through focused vision on expression, lighting, and composition, the images reveal a visual narrative that talks without words and penetrates the soul. The arrest of the rawness of vulnerability, forte, strength, or mystery, summonses viewers to connect deeply with the subject. Each stare, veiled glance, wrinkle and shadow becomes a section in a story that mirrors the intricacies of identity, ethos, or individual journey, making the portraits a captivating form of graphical storytelling.
Gurdeep Dhiman on His Portraits
Gurdeep Dhiman considers portraits “A map to one’s heart and window to their soul. It is fascinating to study the lines on a face that tell a million stories, eyes that reflect many emotions and expressions that draw you in.” His eye to see swiftly, clandestinely and from unusual and unique angles, makes time stop in that single moment and leaves the bystander spellbound.
Black and White Photography in Encounter With a Moment
Gurdeep Dhiman’s Black and White photography captures the quintessence of time and involvement. The absence of colour augments the focus on texture and subject. His portraits serve as timeless tributes to the beauty of ageing and the richness of life etched into the face. Creative contours in landscape photography acme the natural flow and cadence of the environment, and transforms ordinary scenes into ‘magnum opuses’. With his keen observation and deliberate reframing of images clicked, he changes the gestalt or alignment of the image, making the unacquainted fragments part of the familiar whole. The interplay of light and shadow heightens these contours, adding drama to the shades of grey and intrigue to the composition.
Gurdeep Dhiman’s Take on Landscape Photography
Gurdeep finds stimulating delineations in landscape photography while focusing on the natural lines and shapes that guide the viewer’s eye through the image. He looks for dramatic crests and elevations, curving rivers, twisted shores, and serrated mountain peaks to generate visual interest. The light and shadow have been kept in mind to emphasize these contours, especially during golden or blue hours when the light is soft and manoeuvring. His frames and perspectives mark his unique language and he dares to experiment with low angles, wide lenses, and elevated viewpoints to make the simple and known scenes appear anew and tell a story through the lens.
A minimal approach in many places emphasises simplicity, clean compositions and understated elements. By doffing away disruptions, he focuses on distinctive perspectives, surfaces, configurations, and contrasts and inevitably designs lines through them, which form a composition naturally, without editing the setup. This slant often challenges traditional viewpoints and invites a meditative appreciation of form and space, transmuting acquainted vistas into outstanding visual declarations.
Observing lines in terrains has been Gureep Dhiman’s key element in landscape photography. Natural lines, such as rivers, pathways, ridges, or the horizon, guide the eye through the edging and build depth and perspective. One can observe diagonal and curved lines which add drive, while horizontal lines evoke tranquillity and constancy in his compositions. Composing these lines is not a matter of a day. Years of consistent practice and an unswerving penchant give him a vision to enrich the narrative and balance the shots. In his photography, animals can be seen playing a minimal role within the space, subtly enhancing the scene’s composition. Their presence, though small, is not insignificant. It adds a sense of scale, motion, or life to the gigantic barrenness of landscapes, creating visual balance. This delicate interplay between animals and passive space deepens the plot and emotive association of the photograph.
Paintings included with Encounter With a Moment
Gurdeep Dhiman is a person who believes that his photographs are ‘less about documentation, and more about imagination, expression and emotions.’ His titles are so mesmerizing too, like ‘Alone… on the way to my destination-1’ which shows a faraway click of a road with a truck, acting as a line dividing the expansive textural layout. In another one in the series, a tiny vehicle makes the eye move from top to bottom, losing oneself in the complexities of topographies. ‘Prayer beads’ is a portrait of an old lady laughing from the heart, with broken teeth, unruly hair, a rosary in one hand and a prayer wheel in another. ‘Flight to Win the Race’ is a horizontal dramatic play of clouds, mountains and dunes, and here too, the wild kiangs walking in the forefront are bringing drive into the picture.
“Symmetry in the desert” unfolds the curvaceous composition charged up with water and its shadow adding to the arches of the sand. “Alone in the Dunes” is simply hypnotic, where one frame appears to be a collage of myriad textures, with a loner walking through the vast greys with touches of greens. “Land of Mystery-ii” is a scene balanced by a black and white horse with colossal mountains in the background. “Magnificent rhythmic snow mountains” enwraps another piece of whiteness adorned with perforated shadows. In ‘Hidden Paradise’ a lone bird is flying across the blues greens and yellows, without overwhelming the image, underlining the sumptuousness and quietude of the environs.
Leh and Ladakh’s Memory in Jehangir Art Gallery’s Show
The picturesque and exquisite sights of Leh and Ladakh always tug him and force him to strike another tête-à-tête with the landscape where ‘heaven meets the earth’. He expresses, “The barren landscape, the deep blue skies, the lush green valley – the stunning and breathtaking contrast of this region has this ‘everything, everywhere, all at once feeling’, a harmonious balance with a quiet spirituality to it.” He believes in observing and identifying with his subjects, being empathetic towards them, understanding them and then structuring a narrative which becomes a work of art and heart. With a still capture, motion credibility and handling of time and space, each picture lingers as an after-image.
Gurdeep Dhiman’s works reverberate with the views of Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist Sebastião Salgado, and he is also enthused by the artistic works of celebrated photographers such as Henri Cartier, Jimmy Nelson, Raghu Rai and Steve McCurry. A master’s in fine arts from the Department of Fine Arts, Kurukshetra University (KUK), he has been pursuing his works of art in conceptual, portraiture, architectural, cultural, and landscape photography on various subjects. Recipient of the prestigious Amateur Photographer of the Year Award at the seventh National Photography Awards, he has participated in around 400 national and international art exhibitions, camps, workshops, and solo shows. Presently Chairman of Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi, Chandigarh, Gurdeep is a founder member of Saksham Sparsh Art Foundation, Chandigarh and has to his credit several prestigious awards and honours.
Image Courtesy – Dr Alka Chadha Harpalani
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