Vibrant at 1000 : Big Temple Thanjavur

Vibrant at 1000: Big Temple, Thanjavur, India, which honours the millennium of the consecration of Rajarajeswaram and is elegantly produced is a tour de force. It is a well conceived and beautifully crafted secular exploration (visual walk through of a creation that (in Anuradha’s words) “has no equal…in sheer scale… is exquisite but does not tax the senses…. Is mathematically precise vet creatively dynamic…. Tranquil and inspiring. Iqbal’s photography here is joyous, admiring, rich in art and historical whispers and intimations, offering stunning images, like the opening with the birds set off against the blue sky and the Vimana, or the image of people crowding around the priest with the Aarti, a work of magic realism.

But it is a photography that works within an aesthetic of restraint, which avoids the artiness of self-consciousness art and leaves you with the feeling not of surfeit but of wanting more through this particular lens.