Bonny Hazuria’s Solo Show Of Photographic Works February 22, 2011

New Delhi: Bonny Hazuria presents a solo show of of photographic works titled Between Heaven & Earth at the Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi from February 23, 2011 till February 28, 2011.
Nearly 40 photographic works in the current show reflect the fine balance between the spiritual and the earthly, between what is human and what is godly. Graceful imagery is made even more resplendent with the techniques Bonny employs. Utilising her training as a painter (she also works on canvas regularly), she imparts the same painterly skill to her photographs. Creating a unique language of her own, Bonny’s photographs are ‘painted’, although in a digital medium, enhancing the image’s effect to create a completely new work from the original. In some works, she creates collages, while in others it is a single image, all layered with textures and paints that has been created digitally, with special lighting effects to create the final image.
She says: “The choice of my technique is a self-creation and that was the biggest challenge. To choose the right tools and programmes which would have all the possible colours and brushes to play with is what always is the fun part,” she says.

Her recent works reflect her personal journey of self-discovery - be it in landscapes or portraits. For instance, in a series of works on Prague titled ‘Reverie’ and ‘Sublime’, Bonny aptly brings out the old world charm and the mysticism of the Czech capital which has remained intact since the Second World War. Using her colour palettes and lighting techniques to make the photographs more ethereal, Bonny shows her version of a fair-tale world that exists in Prague!
A similar fascination with the “painted photograph” is evident in her portraits of Monks of Dharamsala and more so, of people from Indonesia which is Bonny’s “favourite place”. Says the avid traveller: “Indonesians are simple people who glow with an inherent divinity, visible despite the place being one of the fastest growing tourist destinations of the world. I have taken some portraits there during a temple ceremony.”
In her photographs of bare bodies - with some as swirling forms as in Minx and Nymph - that have been “abstracted”, Bonny uses the effect of textures of fabrics and her favourite colours to lend it a spiritual grace that a nude photograph could never depict.

But the body of work that stands out, not merely for its innovative treatment but also for those who feature in it, are painted photographs of personalities like Sushma Seth, Sabrina Lall, Malini Ramani, Tisca Chopra, Kamal Sidhu and Swapan Seth among others. “When I recreate their photographs onto canvases, it brings out for me and the viewer the real person behind a simple picture.”

She says: “I was fascinated by photography very early in life with my father’s work playing a major influence in the years of my apprenticeship.” In fact, her father Kitty Hazuria, a well known fashion photographer, helped Bonny hone her skills by allowing her to photograph fashion models while Bonny was still in college. Soon, Bonny established herself as a fashion photographer, extremely popular with a clientele that needed personal portfolios. The fashion industry was only just beginning to boom and this provided Bonny with several opportunities to experiment – the first being her immediate connect with faces, something that wasn’t being done at that time.
Says Bonny, an Economics graduate from SRCC: “In the 90’s, I realized that faces and people were my forte. I found myself drawn to the sublime in the ordinary and my eye invariably searched out the soul in the mundane. I gradually moved away from the glamorous aspect of my art towards that which reflected my own personal growth. What draws me now is an inherent beauty, a spiritual calm and an unbroken peace amidst the everyday chaos of human life.”