Going monochromatic to elevate the ordinary

The Black and White Edition has a portentous title, portentous heft and a foreword in which Shyam Benegal portentously says, &ldquoAyesha Taleyarkhan is a restless photographer who sees the entire world as subjects for her photography.&rdquo

It is a kind and honest observation about the photographs in this expensively produced tome, but it also hazards an explanation for this bouillabaisse of arbitrary stock images featuring giraffes, cacti, trees, barbers, old women, slum kids, tango dancers, monks, coat hangers and those immortal Flickr favourites, broken doors.

There are plenty of pictures of the conspicuously poor tightly framed weather-beaten faces with crooked teeth or smiling little children with flies in their snot. Women squat on the sidewalk one contemplates her face in a hand mirror, another tranquilly stirs an ear cavity with a stick. Of one such image, Taleyarkhan says in the introduction, &ldquoI knew a black and white image would more effectively capture the emotional weight of her ordinariness.&rdquo

On the contrary, the monochromatic has a way of elevating the ordinary. It flatters the un-patrician profile, burns out unsightly bulges and blemishes and places a patina of refinement over the rudest of realities. Just ask the youthful aesthete taking an insta-nostalgic iPhone photo of his shiny shod feet on the sidewalk.

Unlike those photos, though, Taleyarkhan&rsquos aspire to a little more. Which is why her pictures ought to be more than finely produced, technically correct exposures of wildebeest and pagodas she saw on holiday, or things that she just happened to spot lying around the house. A strong overarching theme might have helped, as would a sharper eye for editing and composition. Without that, the pictures reflect nothing more than the stirrings of artistic pretension in a new DSLR owner who marches purposefully towards the closest shantytown in search of some shabby ordinariness to dramatise.