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Sensitive, reflective, intimate. These are not words normally associated with the oeuvre of Pablo Bartholomew, best known for his stark World Press Photo award-winning images: morphine addicts shooting heroin up gnarled forearms in cheap Paharganj hotels, and the glassy-eyed dead baby that came to symbolise the Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984. But it was the feeling of having become “a hard-boiled egg” inured to historic images”this riot, that PM”that prompted Bartholomew to dredge up 35,000 black-and-white negatives of his “personal, collective history” that had gathered dust over a quarter of a century. And are now on exhibit at the National Museum as part of India Photo Now ’08, the French Embassy festival coinciding with French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s India visit.
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