'Where Three Dreams Cross' at the Whitechapel Gallery

To survey 150 years of photography from across three countries is an impressive feat. When these countries are as vast, diverse and complex as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, it seems like a mind-boggling task for the curatorial team of When Three Dreams Cross - directed by Indian-born photographer, writer and curator Sunil Gupta.

The result is over 400 images from 82 photographers who have been born, lived or worked in these countries – displayed across three rooms of The Whitechapel Gallery. Between them, they cover a huge diversity of photographic styles and myriad perspectives of life in the subcontinent.

Subjects range from the iconic – Ragu Rai’s portraits of Mother Theresa and Tanveer Shazad’s press photos of the Supreme Court Crisis in Pakistan are instantly recognisable – to the everyday. The marginalised are represented, such as in Munem Wasif and Ayesha Vellani’s brilliant series documenting the lives of rural workers, but they also represent themselves – in amatuer pictures taken by the children of Sonagachi (sex workers) in the slums.

As the titles suggests, the three dreams are crossed. Rather than segregate photographers by nationality, the works are grouped into five themes: The Portrait, The Performance, The Family, The Body Politic and The Streets. Chronology is also eschewed, with works by individual photographers from different eras and countries grouped alongside each other.

The intention seems to be to deflect a linear historical reading of the images and instead focus our attention on the connections between them. The initial effect, however, is to render you slightly bewildered upon entering the exhibition. This feeling is enhanced by a scarcity of contextual information about the artists and works on display, as well as, in my case, an inadequate cultural syntax for religious symbolism, caste and Bollywood history.

As you progress through the rooms though, you begin to see for yourself the emergence of a South Asian photographic tradition, apparent through the imagery and pre-occupations of the photographers. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the show is seeing how contemporary artists are acknowledging, adapting and subverting their own photographic or cultural heritage. Prashant Panja's 1990s series King, Commoner and Citizen is displayed alongside 19th century photographs of Maharajas dressed in all the finery of their traditional ceremonial clothing.

The most curious object I found was the Hijras – an album of eunuchs photographed in their saris and moustaches during the 1880s. It’s displayed near Asim Hafeez’s magazine style snapshots of contemporary ladyboys in Karachi, which claims back self-representation of the ‘third sex’ – an unfamiliar concept to our diametric western understanding of gender.

Despite its challenges, if you’re at all interested in photography or the history, culture and people of the Indian subcontinent, then this is a rewarding exhibition with plenty to get your teeth into. Coming between Indian Highway at the Serpentine last year, and Saatchi’s upcoming mega-show The Empire Strikes Back, I suspect it will retrospectively be seen as an important step in the establishment of a South Asian photographic canon.

Where Three Dreams Cross is at the Whitechapel Gallery until 11th April 2010.

Reviewed for Spoonfed.

Decode: Digital Design Sensations at the V&A

Despite this being the decade we’re all meant to go digital, exhibitions that really engage with the subject still seem few and far between. With this in mind, Decode: Digital Design – the V&A’s latest show in collaboration with digital veterans onedotzero – couldn’t be better timed.

Entering the transformed Porter Gallery, you pass through a swathe of grass-like LED stalks that flicker on and off in response to your movement, to find yourself in a corridor lined with monitors. Across their screens flash rotating and repeating patterns, generated by creatively written computer code. Each work is labelled with a combination of three categories that distinguish digital approaches to design: Code, Network and Interactivity.

The challenge with this exhibition is that many of the screen-based works could easily be displayed on a home computer. While innovative, some of the code-based work appears to be little more than a clever screensaver. Other works like We Feel Fine – Sep Kamvar and Jonathan Harris’s visualisation of live status updates from around the world – are freely accessible online. By putting these displays in a gallery environment though, Decode gives us the space to explore, compare and contemplate them.

Moving further in, the work evolves into larger installations that rely on communications technology and interactivity. The work that really stands out is that is that which demands to be displayed in a gallery or live context. Simon Heijens’ Tree and Lightweed animations, which respond to wind monitored by a sensor outside the gallery, are a real highlight. As is Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Make Out, with its hundreds of videos of kissing couples sourced from Youtube rippling across the wall.

My favourite of these was Ross Phillips’ Videogrid, made of panels containing a repeating second of video recorded by groups of visitors on the other side of the screen. Together they make a quirky, transient display that leaves you feeling like you’ve shared something with those around you.

As a whole, whether you're marveling at a computer simulation of flight paths or throwing virtual paint over screens with your arms, Decode leaves you feeling like a big kid in the Science Museum’s Launchpad. For the £5 entrance fee that’s well worthwhile. There are also further works situated around the rest of the museum and, for digital enthusiasts, there’s a concurrent exhibition of early computer art, Digital Pioneers, in Rooms 90 and 88a.

Decode: Digital Design is at the V&A until 11th April 2010.

Reviewed for Spoonfed.