Song of A River

When I first saw the black and white photos of “Sacred Rivers”, an exhibition by KC Chong at Hin Bus Depot in Penang, Malaysia, I was struck by the effect of their large size.
The photo prints were about 3 x 5 feet.
Standing in front of one and learning about the subject was quite extraordinary.
The large size allowed the images to break through the clichés.
The subject matter is certainly not new: India. Bangladesh. People. River. Who has not taken a photo of it?
Chaos of Indian cities, desperate lives, beauty and tragedy. Nothing new there.
But I stood and looked and marvelled at the images and the stories behind them.
Everything was larger than life.
At that scale, it was powerful, moving, intense.
I must also admit that the worn-out condition of the walls played a part – and was completely in sync with the mood of the images.

Meet the artist

I would not have noticed the artist was by my side had KC not volunteered an explanation that the photo I was looking at — a group of boats, moored to a larger one — was a restaurant.
And that the way the image was displayed — suspended from the ceiling — mimics the gentle rocking of the waves.
How brilliant!

“Sacred Rivers” featured 34 images, each a part in an overarching storyline and a meditation on modern India and Bangladesh: The passage of time, colonial legacies, engineering feats, desperate lives, environmental tragedy, beauty in unexpected guises.

The photos were taken over a period from 2011-2014 and had been published in a book earlier.

Vigorously Edited

KC told me that it was on the strength of the images in that book that the curators at Hin Bus Depot decided to offer him the chance to exhibit.

The book has a lot more photos. The exhibition is a vigorously edited version.

Less is certainly more in this case, and the viewer gets to truly appreciate the significance of each.

Every piece is strong — from the Mullik Ghat flower market, to the Howrah Bridge, to the shipyard workers of Burigangga River and boat builders of Cox’s Bazaar. For those who care to step inside, a discovery.