Review: Echoes of Silence by Dev Inder- an exhibition of photographs at Jehangir Art Gallery

At Jehangir Art Gallery’s Terrace Gallery, Dev Inder’s exhibition Echoes of Silence (12–18 November 2025) unfolds as a meditative journey into the paradoxes of landscape and human presence. His photographs are not mere records of nature but explorations of relationships—between figures, forms, and fleeting moments.

Inder’s acute vision transforms everyday elements—fallen branches, billboards, reeds in the breeze—into visual anagrams, unlocking layers of perception. His lens captures the coexistence of the ephemeral and the eternal, echoing Simon Schama’s idea that landscapes are cultural constructs before they are nature. Each frame becomes a site of resolution, where imagination and reality converge.

Minimalism underpins his practice. A valley bound in arboreal embrace, or the More’ plains of Ladakh animated by a lone vehicle, reveal how subtle compositional choices infuse life into vast terrains. Similarly, a plant cradled by rock transcends binaries of animate and inanimate, becoming a meditation on ecology and interdependence.

Spatial ambiguity and abstraction enrich his lexicon. Concentric rings in stone recall tree memory; towering rocks morph into human silhouettes. Compression of perspective reshapes landscape into architecture, reminding us that perception itself defines terrain. Even negative space is handled with precision, as in the image of a man resting beneath precarious rocks—his presence anchoring the composition into balance.

Several images contain a few quintessential elements of a good photograph. For example, in the following photograph, the intrigue is hidden in what is missing! We can not see the face of the person. We do not know why the board is blank! Everything being said, there remains no room for the observer to ponder. As John Berger said in his book, Understanding a photograph, missing elements compel the viewer to think and feel.

Then if we look at the following photograph, we are immediately struck by the premonition of a raging thunderstorm about to sweep everything away. The moment is running away. We want to know what happened next. Did the men and the animals survive the assault of the wind?

We do not come to know but are left wondering.

Then the following photograph brings a sense of static silence. As if everything we see within the frame of the photograph had frozen in time and space long ago. But still, a question nags us. Where did the fallen trunk of the tree come from? wordlessly it tells us that I have past.

Ultimately, Inder’s photographs invite intimacy with the landscape. Dead stumps rise like verse, bleached branches animate into limbs, and restrained tonal ranges dissolve hierarchies. His work resonates with Walter Pater’s dictum that all art aspires to the condition of music: in Echoes of Silence, one hears visual notes of rhythm, harmony, and quiet transcendence.

This exhibition is less about seeing and more about being seen—a contemplative dialogue between photographer, landscape, and viewer.