1. 1550 South Coast Highway • Laguna Beach, California 92651 • 949-497-4292 • Fax 949-497-6953
The Fuller Building • 41 East 57th Street, 8th Floor • New York, New York 10022 • 212-838-8818 • Fax 212-838-8833
Wendt Gallery Hosts Major Exhibition to Benefit Salaam Balak Trust
Photography exhibition to feature works by 3 major photographers from India.
Photographs by Pablo Bartholomew, Prabir Purkayastha and Amita Talwar to be showcased.
New York, NY August 16th, 2010
Wendt Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of their new exhibition Vanishing Spirits on view from
September 8th through September 17th, 2010. The exhibition will be open for public viewing Tuesday
through Saturday from 10 am to 6 pm. Vanishing Spirits is lead by a strong team including Exhibition
Curator, Priyanka Mathew of Sotheby’s; Exhibition Director, Karen Stone Talwar; Director of Sales, Payal S.
Parekh and Director of Marketing, Neil Ghosh. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Salaam Baalak Trust,
founded by philanthropist and filmmaker Mira Nair.
Joseph and Serina Manqueros of Wendt Gallery will host a private reception on Wednesday, September
8th, from 6 to 8 pm. Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres will be served. If you would like to attend or would like
more information, please phone 212-838-8818, or email info@wendtgallery.com. Please RSVP if you wish
to attend. To view the exhibition online, please visit our website at - www.wendtgallery.com.
There is a rich tradition of Indian photographers who continue to provide a vessel to catalog the constant
decimation and regeneration of this great landscape. Vanishing Spirits is an exhibition of photographs
that brings together the work of three photographers; Pablo Bartholomew, Prabir Purkayastha and Amita
Talwar; as they capture rare and dissipating modes of existence in the country. The artists isolate and draw
upon social conditions and transforming landscapes – freezing in time studies of social constructs that
make up India.
Prabir Purkayastha has spent almost
two decades traveling through
preciously disappearing areas
of India, from the wilderness of
Ladakh and Pushkar to the marginal
communities in Bengal and Assam.
Vanishing Spirits presents a subset
of rare images that captures some of
these remote and magical places.
Looking Upward (left) spirits
the values of traditional India.
Purkayastha dims the background,
spotlighting the figure in the heart
of the picture. A man stands in the
center of the photograph with his
hands stretched outward reaching
for the radiant light that descends
down on him. He is not only embraced by this overwhelming presence of a higher being but in fact longs
for it.

2. 1550 South Coast Highway • Laguna Beach, California 92651 • 949-497-4292 • Fax 949-497-6953
The Fuller Building • 41 East 57th Street, 8th Floor • New York, New York 10022 • 212-838-8818 • Fax 212-838-8833
Pablo Bartholomew comes from Indian photography blue blood. His father Richard Bartholomew was
an art critic and a photographer who captured some of the most amazing pictorials around the most
celebrated community of Indian artists in time shortly after independence. Influenced by his father’s work,
Bartholomew’s photographs pulsate with the energy of the urban in India. Mumbai is a particular muse to
Bartholomew and continuing in this effort to explore transforming spaces, the exhibition presents a set of
his photographs that provides a lens into a fading community of Parsis in Mumbai who at one time were
a vital part of milieu of the city.
Rag Pickers (right) demonstrates the clash of a
transitioning culture in some of India’s major
developing Mecca’s. Revealing the conflict between
the past and present colliding into one another as
they transition and evolve into their own version
of modern society. The artist captures a nomadic
family walking towards the metropolis. The viewer
is imbued with the concept that these nomads are
simultaneously walking away from their past as they
walk towards their unknown.
Amita Talwar’s photographs allow us the opportunity
to take a step back for a broader brushstroke. They
give us an expansive collection of images across the country of quiet and spiritual places.
Woman at the Door (below) depicts inanimate objects, such as a door and window melding with colors
and patterns in the subject’s dress, creating a union of the usual with the unusual, the old with the
new, the ancient with the modern, seemingly strewn
together to exist cohesively in an uncertain state of
human transition. Through her use of symbolism, she
demonstrates to the viewer how civilization imprints its
DNA for generations to come. These life impressions,
whether in architecture, clothing, art, or patterns, stand
as beacons of the ancient way of life.
Vanishing Spirits concludes its survey with additional
works by these artists including landscapes, figures, and
urban scenes.
Wendt Gallery hopes to bring a greater awareness of the
influence that contemporary art plays in today’s global
and shifting societies.
Written by Serina Manqueros, Curator, Wendt Gallery