A man on a cycle rides alone, the barren landscape of Tsampa, China, stretching before him; a group of smiling women are framed against a wedge of white light that lights up the mountains; a pavement glistens in the rain. The black and white photographs taken by 31-year-old Vidura Jung Bahadur with his Fuji TX2 rangefinder on his travels in China and Tibet found their way to Bodhi Art Gallery in August last year. The show was a sell-out—one of them sold for close to a lakh rupees—till a few years ago, an unheard of sum for a photographic print.

In November 2006, India’s first photograph gallery, Tasveer, opened in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata. Last season, Tasveer held six shows and plans to have another six this year. “The response has been pretty good. It seems that at least with a sizeable section of the younger generation, it is avant garde to collect photographic prints, not canvases,” says Shalini Gupta, who with fellow art connoisseurs Abhishek Poddar and Navin Kishore set up the gallery. “Overseas, photography is now almost a parallel movement. We thought it would be interesting to explore the genre in India,” says Poddar. Their hunch was right.

The boom in the art mart is rubbing off on Indian photography too. As prices of canvases reach astronomical levels, many investors have turned to photographs, which are more accessible and cheaper. While the price of a Souza or a Tyeb Mehta will run into crores, prints of masters like Raghu Rai might come in for just about Rs2.5 lakh to Rs5 lakh. On an average, prints come between Rs20,000 to R 80,000 depending on the quality of the photograph and the fame of the photographer. “Prices in photography are very reasonable. And what you get in exchange is a piece of history,” says Rai. “In another two decades, photography will have the same investment propositions as art,” says Poddar. Many art galleries in India—Visual Art Gallery in India Habitat Centre in Delhi, CIMA Art Gallery in Kolkata, Bodhi Art Gallery in Delhi, Mumbai, New York and Singapore to name a few—are now hosting photography exhibitions.

... contd.