New Concert Photography Exhibition Opens At Delhi’s TLR

Photo: Rohit Lal

Music and concert photography gets its time in the spotlight with a new photography exhibition slated to open at Delhi’s newly renovated TLR (The Living Room). Access All Areas will feature the works of long time music and gig photographers Shiv Ahuja, Asif Khan, Rohit Lal and Vijay Katé and opens on March 23.

 ROLLING STONE INDIA spoke to photographer Shiv Ahuja, about putting together India’s first ever group exhibition of concert photography:

How did the exhibition come together?

I had shown some of my concert work at TLR in 2009. That was my first show and it was a great experience- They were really nice through the whole process and helped me reach out to quite a few people. Just last week I got a call from them asking if I wanted to do another show since they were reopening after some

renovations. I suggested doing a group show because there are a lot of people shooting concerts now and I thought it would be great to see the different kinds of work people are doing in this genre in the same show. I really feel like there’s a strong community of photographers now who are shooting concerts all over the country- and it’s just great!

 

Parikrama's Chintan Kalra (Photo: Asif Khan)

What was your method in compiling the exhibition? Is there a theme or an idea running through it?

Well to be honest there wasn’t a method per se. I sent out a message to the other photographers to see if they were interested in something like this and they all agreed immediately. We then exchanged some emails and decided on a few themes/ideas to work with. Initially, I thought we’d try and run something that ties the show together but I soon realized that that was going to be a little tough since everyone has such a different viewpoint. I haven’t ever done this kind of thing before either and it’s only my second show, so there’s still a lot to learn. They’re all black and white photographs from concerts around the country and that kind of ties them together. We also tried to see if we could experiment with working with a single idea for each of us individually, so we’ve tried to display the work in a way where there are some themes running between the pictures of each photographer. 

Access All Areas opens at The Living Room, Hauz Khas Village, Delhi on March 23.

Featured photographers: Shiv Ahuja, Asif Khan, Rahul Lal and Vijay Katé.