Pictures and Progress
The Last Seven Words
Max Kandhola’s photography is held in major public and private collections in England, Europe, America and India, including, The Deutsche Bank Collection and Government Art Collection UK. He recently talked to the FACE community group to discuss one of his works titled: ‘Last Seven Words of Christ’, 1997, (Black Christ).
FACE member Max Kandhola is a British Punjabi Sikh and renowned fine art photographer as well as a Principal Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, teaching on theory and practice, introduced his work to the FACE community audience to discuss the power of influence and research by first recalling the experience of documenting both his mother and father’s death through drawings and photographs whilst at the hospital.
“It’s important where your images are placed and seen. Taking the speech of Frederick Douglass: “Pictures and Progress,” as a starting point, I explore the power the image provides in terms of one’s position and identity in society. I use that within the context of making images now because I think it’s important where your images are seen and experienced.”
“each new period, and each new condition seeks its needed and appropriate representation.”
Frederick Douglass “The Age of Pictures” in “Lecture on Pictures” “The Last Seven Words”, is a metaphor for the last words of a dying man – in this case my father, however I worked across two projects during this period. Christ as a man of colour evolved at the same time.”
“The Last Words, is also a metaphor for an encounter that one has with death. It’s private, it’s very intimate. Throughout the period that my mother and then later my father died in the 90s, I questioned death and dying. In my research I questioned nurses, doctors, I questioned patients and families.
When engaging with death, one looks for help beyond the family. We go to our private secular spaces through mind and body, we question faith and beliefs. We try and find answers and we seek comfort. I read Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, The Five Stages of Grief. I questioned my own faith. I started to look at European representations of Christ as well as my own Sikh faith, Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh – the first Guru and the tenth Guru. I began to collate and rework images and to collect my own reference points. This was a personal a cathartic approach, my grieving through the photographic representation and to some extent the act of destruction and reworking of new photographic prints to provide another alternative context. The studio provided a place in which I could escape, yet still confront death through my art.”
“I found solace in Derek Jarman’s ‘BLUE,’ 1993, through the voices and whispers in the film he conceived at the end of his life. This was extraordinary to see in the cinema at the time of its release. Many years later, my encounter for the first time at the Venice Biennale 2007, in viewing Bill Viola’s, Oceans Without A Shore at the 15th Century Church, was extraordinary, it was the closest I have witnessed visually and experienced in art the encountering sensation of death.
Questions rose to the surface for me, and, in a desire to normalise death and, as an artist, to explore this intimate, so rarely talked about space, I began drawing my mother in pen and ink over a period of 12 days in 1984. And then 14 years on, I photographed my father’s death over a period of 4 hours in 1998.
In revisiting the drawings of my mother now, it is about specific moments in life, regressing back into the past to discuss the present and future with my wife and son. In viewing the drawings, I have started to write poetry, words, creating a structure within the writing in remembering that specific time. The drawings are repetitive, page after page, I try and capture a sense of her presence, her soul.”
Mother ਮਾਂ 1984 pen and ink drawings on paper
“As you view each drawing, the black ink marks on the paper creates a resemblance of my mother as a memory. These are dream like memories, but it provides a sense of place a time. In photographing my father, you are confronted with a landscape of his body. A body that we caressed, a body that is worn and distressed through illness. Within the photographs you are confronted with the physiognomy of my father, his eyes looking at death a place I do not know. The series can be viewed in my publication Illustration of Life, published by Dewi Lewis Publishing.”
This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.
ਇਸ ਦਿਨ ਤੂੰ ਮੇਰੇ ਨਾਲ ਫਿਰਦੌਸ ਵਿੱਚ ਹੋਵੇਂਗਾ.Hodie mecum eris in Paradiso.
Lk. 23: 43
“Christ as a man of colour is curated through all these experiences and influences. His eyes are closed deliberately. Both my parents had closed eyes in their final hours. I worked with a friend who posed for me, to evoke that journey I documented of my father, in the last few hours of his life. I created Monochrome imagery but later re-shot in blue as a slight homage to Derek Jarman. The hair and locks are almost glowing, interwound within the crown of thorns.
This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.
ਇਸ ਦਿਨ ਤੂੰ ਮੇਰੇ ਨਾਲ ਫਿਰਦੌਸ ਵਿੱਚ ਹੋਵੇਂਗਾ.Hodie mecum eris in Paradiso.
Lk. 23: 43
“Light seems to leak from his skull; through his nostrils, hair, ears, and the crack between his eyelids, turning these edge-lands of the body into spaces of electric energy, where light and dark merge and flow into each other. In these images the solid is transfigured, dissolving into a nebulous sea of colour. But these are contemporary, post-colonial images, the traditional pious features of the white European saviour replaced by a young black man, with a neatly trimmed fashionable goatee and hair braided into a crown of thorns; and where Day echoes the pious gaze that is found in many crucifixion paintings, with Christ’s open eyes looking towards heaven for salvation, the eyes of Kandhola’s Christ are closed, his enigmatic expression one of internal reverie. The plastic realism of these striking photographs evokes the humanness of the ‘historical Jesus. Captured in the reportage realism of black and white film they are portraits of a sleeping young man rather than a divine messiah”.
Revd Dr Richard Davey Anglican Chaplain visiting Fellow - Nottingham Trent University“I have observed how people interact with these images when they are shown. Their presence facilitates conversations of loved ones who have passed away. The images of my father could be anyone’s father and that is its power.”
“These images have been displayed in a variety of secular settings and within art galleries. I knew I wanted to work with St Marks Church in The Bowrey in New York because of their work within the community and the history of the place, Patti Smith had one of her first Poetry performances there and also within the community of St Marks Church there is political energy through the writers and poets that were given space, and the support for Black Lives Matter, Racial Justice, Human Rights and the LGBTQ community. When I spoke to The Rev. Anne Sawyer in 2020, in regard to this work I was invited to install the images as part of Lent around the surrounding fence as an installation. This year in 2021 the images went up again and now St Marks will display it every year at Lent which is very affirming for me because the conversation I have created is so necessary.”
St Marks Church In The Bowery New York , The Last Seven Words of Christ Max Kandhola Feb – April 2020
“Although much of the work I create goes into private collections or books it’s important for me to feel I can reach as many people as possible.”
In gifting us the experience of getting up close to death to discuss one of the few commonalities we all share, Kandhola evokes the spiritual, the esoteric and the everyday. This valuable practical and abstract narrative affects us all in different ways. It is the gift that keeps on giving and as such the images continue to inspire and prompt audience reaction. ‘Pictures and Progress’ The Last Seven Words, has been consistently exhibited, published, sold and held in private collections since 1997
Text Caryn Franklin
BIOG
Max Kandhola is represented by PhotoInk http://www.photoink.net/ in India and manages his studio from Birmingham England.
He was twice the recipient of the prestigious Light Work Artist in Residency at Syracuse New York. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and published 4 monographs. The photographic work is positioned within the context of Black and Asian identity and histories.
Recent exhibitions include The Last Seven Words of Christ in collaboration with St Marks Church In The Bowery, New York, Feb- March 2021 and 2020 and ‘u fucking paki’ FotoFest 2018 Biennial: India/Contemporary Photographic and New Media Art, Houston, Texas, United States, 10 March - 22 April 2018.
COMMUNITY COMMENTS
PM: The process of making and venerating images of your parents, is distressing to view, but brings our humanity to painstaking reality.
SL: No life is wasted if it is acknowledged. You have managed to capture and unite us all in a calming way – I see your images as really beautiful and contemplative
CF: The conversation around death is very important. You have recorded the narrative around a good death. We need to celebrate a good death. It unites us all and where there is fear...we can bring it into the light.
M: Such beautiful, moving, haunting work. I wonder whether presenting this work drains you emotionally. Thank you for sharing with us, Max.
DH: Thank you Max - Talking about death is seen as difficult - did making the work give you and family comfort during the death or after?
DH: You cannot escape death - so it is interesting how different cultures deal with death (sadness) or celebrate death. The type of death is very interesting on how death is seen and felt I think.
EZ: Adult orphan…Wake keepings…celebrating LIFE. Death rituals VERY important…
VP: Love your work Max! Find the pictures strangely comforting.
RB: I think both pieces are both striking - The Gaze is particularly powerful for me.
PM: Really powerful discussion Max. Photography has the power to heal
Research Links and reading material with thanks to Max Kandhola
St. Marks Church in The Bowrey New York
https://stmarksbowery.org/about
Bill Viola Oceans Without a Shore
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/bill-viola-2333/bill-viola-venice-biennale-2007
Max Kandhola Illustration of life
Max Kandhola Illustration of Life
http://www.photoink.net/artist/artistdetail/64/90#1
Five Stages of Grieving
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-53267505
Douglas Davies Death Ritual and Belief
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/death-ritual-and-belief-9781474250979/
https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/death-life-studies/
The Figure of Christ in Contemporary Photography https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/death-life-studies/
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/health/29book.html
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1954433.Swimming_in_a_Sea_of_Death
Eyes of The Skin: Architecture and The Senses by Juhani Pallasmaa
A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvior
Swimming In A sea of Death by David Rieff
The Book of Hours by Kevin Young
Mourning Diary Roland Barthes
The Gospel According to St Matthew film by Pier Pasolini
Blue film by Derek Jarman
Mr Palomar by Italio Calvino
Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard
Race, Culture and Difference edited by James Donald & Ali Rattansi
Orientalism by Edward Said