Using Her Eye To Remake the World: Clare Arni’s Inventive Career
Gaining An Early Sense of the Fragility of Life
When Clare Arni was three years old, she moved with her family from Scotland to Peru. Her earliest memory in the South American country involves an earthquake, a frequent occurrence in that region. She was seated with her brother inside a pedal car when around her windows imploded, compound walls crumbled. At a very young age, she was to recall how quickly everything could shatter and change. Perhaps this stayed with her, the ephemerality of structures, of how everything solid could dissolve into shrapnel.
Sinking Roots in India
From Peru, the family moved to India. Clare’s father, Martin Henry, was appointed the head of J & P Coats (India). At first, they stayed at Koratti in Kerala for three years. Inside a factory compound, with manager bungalows, a club, and a school. “Now that plant has been completely abandoned,” says Clare, who has retained an acute sensitivity to how spaces morph over time.
Since J & P Coats acquired Madura Mills to form Madura Coats, the family shifted to Madurai in Tamil Nadu, where Clare spent her formative school years from the ages of nine to thirteen.
Madurai, also known as a temple town in Tamil Nadu, may have been an offbeat setting for the English family. Clare’s parents were not conservative by any means. Rather, as Clare puts it, “they were groovy ‘60s people and they wanted to party.” Conscious perhaps of stirring up the South Indian city, her mother wore mini-dresses and danced and quaffed Booth’s High and Dry gins at sparkly gatherings. In the meanwhile, her father rebuilt the club, trying to shake off some of its stuffiness. He also dismantled its rules: opening up admissions to lower ranks, and integrating two separate clubs into a unified space built entirely with local materials.
Keen to educate their children in a progressive, cultural setting that would resonate with their values while imbibing the best of local traditions, the Henrys also started a school called Vikaasa. Clare and her siblings attended the new school along with Indian students, all of whom gathered recently for a 50th-year reunion.
Feeling Uprooted in the U.K.
Clare attended a boarding school in England from the age of 13. She recalls it as “five years of utter hell.” The place felt like a haunted manor, to the young teen, who was terrified of encountering its ghostly nun (who according to school lore, had been shoved off the Titanic by the manor’s owner).
Besides, she felt like an outsider. The other kids were new to each other as well, but they had studied in English schools and knew the ropes in a manner that Clare didn’t. Moreover, she was viewed as an eccentric. Though she looked like all the others, she spoke differently: with a thick Tamilian accent. While they bonded over TV shows, Clare’s family had not even possessed a television in Madurai.
She was bullied and ostracized, not just by the kids, but also by the House Mistress. Who once cut off her hair with a pair of cat scissors; mixing strands of meat into Clare’s hair.
Discovering Her Personal Academic Leanings
Since she wasn’t feeling emotionally settled, she didn’t perform well enough on her Boards. Eventually, she found she wasn’t interested as much in Science or Math as she was in the History of Art. An interest that was aroused by accompanying her avid explorer parents. The Henrys, after all, had visited 23 countries before she turned 13, including places like Afghanistan and Russia.
Moreover, the kids were dragged to every church and museum and monument in these places, drawing their attention, even as kids, to architectural and cultural marvels. The family trips were often so frenetic, that Clare’s sister was once lighting a candle inside a church. When her father Martin asked what she was praying for, she said she was praying that they do not visit any more churches.
After stumbling on an area of interest, Clare completed her A levels and went to college in Scotland, for a degree in Film, Media and Art History. But Clare had already read material that really gripped her. She didn’t enjoy the courses imposed on her inside a structured institutional setting; and found her college experience almost as dreadful as her school years. In the meanwhile, her own parents had moved back to Edinburgh, so she lived with them and commuted to classes.
Returning Home: To The Country That Coursed Through Her Memories
Nonetheless, as soon as she was done with her degree, she packed her bags and caught a flight back to India. Though her family was now back in Scotland, to 21-year-old Clare there was no question about wanting to live anywhere else.
At first, she stayed with an inspiring school teacher from her Madurai days – Dr. Geetha Narayanan (who is also the founder of the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology). Armed with an old-fashioned Nikon camera, she embarked on a four-month Bharath Darshan with a school friend – a long trip on a very tight budget. Traveling on trains and buses, they stayed at very modest lodges. They halted at various historic and cultural sites including Nalanda, Bodh Gaya, Benares, Manali and Rajasthan. All along, an enamored Clare clicked pictures.
In the meanwhile, she had met Nikhil Arni, an architect who was to become her husband in six months. Her parents participated in the South Indian wedding with full fervor. Martin Henry even wore a dhoti and seated Clare on his lap for the “kanya dhanam.” But the couple was more or less broke after marriage, and Clare needed to earn a living. She decided to formally pursue photography. For her first assignment, she shot pictures of a building for the iconic Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa.
Embarking on A New Career
At first, she focused mainly on architectural and fashion photography, landing her assignments in the pre-internet days by word-of-mouth. But she was also keen, from the beginning, on constantly improving her craft.
Putting her photographs up on a slideshow, she invited critiques from a group of architect friends. They said “this works,” and “this doesn’t”, becoming a sort of informal sounding board like early readers often are for writers.
Moreover, she also actively bolstered her own knowledge of architectural principles and perspectives. The group pored over architectural books and magazines, which were rare finds in those days. While the architects might have been drawn by the structures, Clare absorbed the manner in which they had been shot.
For fashion shoots, she worked with Prasad Bidappa, on the Warehouse and Weekender campaigns. Though Bidappa was already quite influential in fashion circles, he was open to Clare’s ideas.
Using Photographs To Reimagine Spaces
Gradually broadening the types of projects she handled – after all, earning an income was still a priority – she was shooting on a chicken farm once, near the edges of the city. And she stumbled on some astonishing ruins in Hosur, which Clare recognized as an exact replica of the Kenilworth Castle in the U.K. She heard later on that there was a tragic love story associated with the building. Clare recreated that story with Indian models, an inventive fashion-in-location kind of shoot.
Staying High-Spirited Even as A Young Mother
At 27, she gave birth to her son, Abhimanyu. When he was two-and-a-half years old, she started working on her first book. Borrowing her husband’s Maruti 800, she traveled the course of the Kaveri River, with her baby boy strapped to the backseat. With her younger sister Oriole as a companion, she had a bucket, a broom, a bottle of Phenyl and a tricycle strapped to the roof.
Since, over the course of the journey, they needed to stay in crummy and unhygienic hotels, Clare would check in and clean the toilets at each halt. All this, while little Abhimanyu was engaged on his tricycle. Clare and her sister traced the path of the entire river, right from Coorg to Poompuhar. They traversed through Srirangapatna and Sivasamudram, through forests that were then inhabited by the sandalwood smuggler and dacoit, Veerappan.
Clare recalls one night, while driving through a dark forest, when her headlights failed. All around her trees hissed and hummed with menace. But when she looked out, she was met with the most stunning sight ever: the silhouetted forest was dotted with thousands of fireflies.
Once, the ever-adventurous Clare even hired an Ultralight plane to take aerial shots of the river. The pilot asked her to bring over some fuel. Clare asked: “In what?” He handed over a jerry can and said: “In this.” When Clare peered into the can, it seemed filled with all kinds of gunk. Aware of how engines could malfunction with the mildest impurities, she balked. The pilot casually reassured her that he would be filtering the fuel before filling the tank. In the end, the ride up was worth it. She says, “There’s something spectacular about sitting inside one of those really little planes and being able to say, go left, and then a little bit to the right, like you would on land, with a taxi or rickshaw.”
That journey led to Eternal Kaveri, a hardbound volume published by the Marg Foundation.
Documenting Historic and Cultural Spaces
Soon after, she met with George Michell, one of the world authorities on South Asian architecture, and John M Fritz, an American archeologist. By then, the duo had been studying the tangled ruins at Hampi, mapping out their details with painstaking drawings, documents and photographs. They asked Clare to shoot for their book, which was based on 20 years of scholarly excursions into archives and around the sun-drenched capital of the erstwhile Vijayanagar Empire. “It’s so thrilling to work with academics,” says Clare, recalling the intense discussions that widened her own learning. An exhilarating three-week walking tour with Michell and Fritz led to New Light on Hampi: Recent Research at Vijayanagara.
Eventually, she ended up collaborating with Michell and Fritz for five books – including Silent Splendour: Palaces of the Deccan, 14th–19th Centuries. One of the project topics was proposed by Clare and culminated in Kanara, a Land Apart: The Artistic Heritage of Coastal Karnataka. Trips down the state’s coast also reinforced its syncretic multifaith heritage – its Jain traditions, its very ancient Islamic history, its Catholic communities and its manifold Hindu practices. For one of their projects, a military historian joined the team, imparting details of various battles fought at different locales.
Building A Solid, Internationally-Recognized Artistic Portfolio
Around then, in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, Indian photography was increasingly being recognized as an art form. Abhishek Poddar, founder of the Tasveer Gallery and of the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), featured Clare’s works in an online exhibition and in Paris.
She was also awarded a grant by the India Foundation for Arts (IFA) to work with the Indian artist Pushpamala N., wherein they recreated specific depictions of South Indian women in the studio, in order to deconstruct them. That project lasted for two years, resulting in a series titled The Popular Series, Native Women of South India: Manners and Customs. The works also intended to parody ‘zenanas’, private studios in which native women used to be photographed by British photographers during colonial times.
Since 2002, Clare has been building her own body of works, including one on Disappearing Professions of Urban India, which documents vocations that are likely to vanish, because of the onslaught of modern and global forces. For instance, in one picture, which depicts the shadowy interiors of Gem & Co., a silver-haired man is bent over his task, possibly burnishing a fountain pen nib. The shop, which specializes in fountain pens and other specialty writing instruments, harkens to a world that is threatened by digital forms of communication.
She is also currently working on a book on a family’s jewelry, another one on Chettinad festivals and a project centered around non-brahminical religious practices in Tamil Nadu. She prefers to burrow into deep topics, excavating aspects of cities and villages that many of their own inhabitants might be too busy to notice.
Clare’s work has also been exhibited internationally at museums in Vienna, London, New York and California. Her pictures have been placed inside the permanent collections of several prestigious international galleries, including the Saatchi Gallery, London and Free/Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute.
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