"Coming from a family associated with cinema before I was born, I’ve grown up immersed in it,” stated artist and photographer Maxie Cooper, who considers herself fortunate to be present in the last decades of the golden years of cinema. She was speaking to Parsiana on the penultimate day (September 14, 2018) of "Now Showing,” her collection of 25 black and white photographs at Rukshaan Art Gallery near Lion Gate in Bombay.
Maxie Cooper with her artworks (above): "memories which will fade"
Shot from somewhat unusual angles, the abstract-looking photographs are overlaid with terminology that is redolent of the 1950s and 60s single screen theaters and film techniques of the times. Dress Circle says one frame, overlaid on an image of the foyer of the New Empire, while another abstract-looking shot with RKO pictures stencilled in celebrates the American film production and distribution company of Hollywood’s golden era. "I captured my images at two cinemas (17 at the New Empire in Bombay and eight at the Elite in Calcutta) I still had (access to), to record what used to be. Later, I thought of sharing the prints with movie buffs,” Cooper said.
"Please don’t ask me to choose,” requested Cooper when asked which of the prints on display were her favorite. She did however point to the one labelled Advance Booking, a collage of tickets to various bygone single screen theaters overlaid with a movie camera. "I taught myself Photoshop (software) to be able to do this...These are unique, because they are not straightforward photos,” Cooper noted.
"I have been photographing since I was in my teens, though this is the first time I am displaying them... In my head I wanted this series to look like celluloid images...The faded and sometimes ethereal images which disappear one into another are a metaphor for reality and memories which too will finally fade,” Cooper noted.
The exhibition was a tribute to Cooper’s father Keki Modi, cinema owner of Western India Theatres. Paternal uncle Sohrab Modi is generally believed to be among the country’s earliest film veterans. "It was a delight to see yet to be released films (at the family owned 39-seater preview theater in Central Bombay), much before the pictures would be commercially released,” reminisced Cooper.