Pat the photographer: 'Unseen Unheard Unexplained'

Gallery owner Matthieu Foss is a brave man. He's taken on the curation of this provocative new photography exhibition by an amorphous, dark-skinned Indian photographer who goes by the name Pat. Often seen disappearing into the fluid backpacker melting pots of Goa, Manali and Mumbai, Pat is a wanderer, a rolling stone that gathers no moss.

So I say brave because, as Foss points out, Pat's work is "totally segregated from the mainstream...[His style is] refreshingly personal and peculiar, which [is what] has probably allowed his eccentricities and oddities to fully manifest themselves." For instance, when he isn't taking pics, he collects old and vintage clothes. 

No single thought or unified idea strings together the images in this exhibition, except that they were shot between 1996 and 2008.

This is 30-year-old Pat's first solo show and the works gathered in his lifetime so far are altogether "provocative, unsettling, raw, free and fearless. The images he creates are dark and mysterious, intimate yet stark, some even unsettling, but all invariably produce some definite emotional response."

It's the kind of utterly un-self-concious art show you don't come across often in Mumbai. Catch it if you can.

'Unseen Unheard Unexplained' an exhibition of photographs by Pat will be on view March 17 till April 13 at Matthieu Foss Gallery, Ground Floor, Hansraj Damodar Trust bldg, Goa Street, Ballard Estate; tel. Salonee Gadgil +91 9820566649, salonee.mfg@gmail.com