>From Khaleej Times Online When lensmen captured images that spoke a thousand words 2 April 2008 SOME of the world's best photographers, representing magazines like Life and agencies like Magnum, were camping near the Birla House in Delhi then, capturing for posterity the movements of that frail and ageing man, who had humbled an empire, but had still not been able to unify the minds and souls of his own people. The legendary French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson - co- founder of Magnum - was in the capital that cold January in 1948, taking images of the Mahatma. American Margaret Bourke-White of Life magazine, whose 'gut-wrenching' images of the violence following the Partition had been splashed across the pages of the magazine, was also pursuing Gandhi. Also in town was a little known photographer, Constantin Joffe, of Vogue USA, doing portraits of the royal family of Jaipur, of Lord Mountbatten and other prominent personalities. Joffe, accompanied by writer Nada Patcevitch, wife of Vogue's managing director, managed to photograph Mahatma Gandhi in the verandah of Birla House, on his last fast, the day before he was assassinated. Joffe's picture of the Mahatma, walking along with members of his family in the compound of the Birla House, was one of the last known colour photographs of his. Most images of Gandhi are in black and white, and colour photographs are a rarity. Vogue, first published in the USA in 1892 and in the UK in 1916 - it launched its India edition last year - has been covering the sub-continent for nearly a century. An exhibition featuring a fascinating collection of nearly 80 images shot in India - and published in the various editions of the magazine - has been curated by Vogue India and will be on display at the Grand Hyatt, Mumbai, this Sunday. 'Vogue's love affair with India' features photographs shot in the country for the British, French, Italian, American, Japanese and Indian editions of Vogue, spanning the years from 1934 to 2007. It features the work of some of the most stellar fashion photographers and their often equally famous subjects. Says Oona Dhabhar, marketing director, Conde Nast India (publishers of the magazine): "Our London-based archivist, Robin Muir, selected nearly 200-odd images that have been used in the various editions of the magazine since inception. We then picked up nearly 80 photographs for display at the exhibition." Naturally, many of the subjects featured in the international fashion magazine have been glamorous people - royalty, international celebrities, Bollywood personalities and of exotic locales including Ladakh and the deserts of Rajasthan. Cecil Beaton, who first came to India in 1934, had been transfixed by the beautiful Princess Karam Kapurthala, who became a default for 'dark' and 'exotic' for the magazine. The princess was extensively featured throughout the 1930s. More recently, in 1999, Arthur Elgort, a widely travelled photographer, took model Maggie Rizer - and a Vogue team - on a 700-mile odyssey from Mumbai to Jaipur, covering Bollywood filmmakers, actors, extras and elephants. As Muir points out, no Vogue expedition to India is complete "without the majestic pachydermic presence of at least two decorated elephants." Of course, elephants are now banned from Mumbai's streets, and foreign photographers looking for exotic shots of the animal in an urban (or Bollywood) setting have to travel outside the metropolis. http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2008/April/subcontinent_April48.xml&section=subcontinent&col= ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India