exploring gender and space in delhi metro…

09Jan09

all these pics are taken inside delhi metro cars… and they tell stories of spaces and genders… and often a single pic tends to tell multiple, even contradictory, stories…

this is not documentation… all the pics are constructed to tell the stories, like any other story telling medium… although by unaware actors… 

but does that mean that those stories never take place for real in such places?

> is that expression of fear or appreciation? there seems to take place an inter-generational consensus/communication…

> a story of stalkers or of the femme fatale?

> just a simple glance as the person-sitting-next gets up, or something more? the rod in the middle doubles as the demarcating line between two juxtaposed spaces of conflicting desires… the lowered eyes of the man-on-left in the first picture may be read as his inability to ga(y)ze as long as the male gaze (represented by the non-lowered eyes of the man-on-right) is dominating the frame… hence the two spaces of conflicting desires are not only juxtaposed, but hierarchicaly so… in the first pic, though the man-on-right’s eyes are not lowered, they are neither looking at anything within the frame… thats because the ‘object of interest’ of that space of desire is absent from the frame… only in the second pic, when the male gaze leaves the scene, we see the ga(y)ze to come in active presence (as it was always already present, but not actively so, not as an agency)… there also takes place a blurring of these two spaces of conflicting desire… though the material rod keeps demarcating the two spaces, the ga(y)ze from the left space enters the right space, as the man-on-right (and with him the space he created) is leaving but has not yet left…

             

> deep into introspection or fantasising?

> war of eyes? or love?

> cornered girl or seduced guy? the hands of the guy being behind alludes to both hand-tied-guy femdom fantasy, and also pinning down the prey with the legs imaginary…

> too many men, too little space… so gotta have the cowboy style face-off… gotta show who’s the baddest ass… the good [top right], the bad [top middle] and the ugly [bottom left]…

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Tags: delhi, gay, gaze, gender, space