Gandhi: A Photo Biography - Hardcover

Rühe, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 071484103X ISBN 13: 9780714841038

Publisher: Phaidon Press, 2001

Synopsis

This striking compilation of almost 300 photographs offers a profound insight into the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) as both a public figure and a private individual. It embodies a precious and intimate view of a side to Gandhi's life with which many are not as familiar, through a perspective that is at once pragmatic and personal. This book pursues a compelling visual narrative and permits us a very rare and highly privileged understanding of Gandhi - given via a diverse range of photographic lenses from the witty and ardent press, to the sensitive and intelligent agency and the ingenuous eye of a great nephew.

Many of these images have never been seen before. They are derived from two essential and exclusive collections: the photo-archives of Gandhi's foremost biographer Vithalbhai Jhaveri, and those of Kanu Gandhi, Gandhi's great nephew. After Jhaveri's death, Peter Rühe assimilated the extensive photo collection of over 9,000 prints into a photo-archive of the highest standard, using scientific cataloguing and computerization. The second photographic source, that of Kanu Gandhi, is especially breathtaking because of its history. Kanu Gandhi lived with Mahatma Gandhi for the last 12 years of the latter's life. He was the sole person by whom Gandhi consented to be photographed - and, even so, only on three conditions: that the freedom movement would not fund them; that there was to be no use of flash; and that Gandhi would not pose for him.

In Rühe's book, Gandhi's extraordinary life is brought to light by means of this astounding collection of images. The pictures in this compilation are also unique in that they follow Gandhi all the way from his early life in India, to his law studies in London, his work in South Africa, and finally his return to lead the struggle for Indian independence, which won him the title 'father of the nation' in India. A magnificent accomplishment in itself, this volume identifies the encompassing sweep of world politics and the perpetual struggles of the poor with the life of a single individual, whose impact on the world is matched by few in the history of mankind.

About this title

Review:

Mahatma Gandhi is the perfect subject for Peter Rühe's impressive pictorial biography Gandhi. Not only was Mahatma Gandhi a consciously humble, compassionate man of principle, prepared to die for his lifelong belief in Satyagraha, or non-violent protest, he was also powerfully photogenic. Rühe has been a Gandhi specialist and visual archivist for nearly 20 years and has compiled his gallery mostly from the vast collections of Kanu Gandhi, a great-nephew, and Vithalbhai Jhaveri, former member of the Indian National Movement. After studying law in England, Gandhi spent two decades in South Africa, where he trained for the rest of his life, his activism fully ignited by the Black Act of 1906, forcing Indians to register. From 1921, the familiar visual identity starts to emerge: lean, bespectacled and unblinking, head shaved, and clad in loincloth and chaddar (a sheet worn as a wrap), in response to the Foreign Cloth Boycott. Influenced by Western writers such as John Ruskin, Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy, he became deeply pained by the impotence of his teachings in the face of Nazi slaughter of the Jews, but India, and its Purna Swaraj, remained his true passion. However, when independence came, on 14 August 1947, he only saw failure with the establishment of independent states of India and Pakistan, and the religious violence that ensued.

Aside from the wonderful historical photography of the Salt March of 1930, his rallies where the audience disappears into the horizon, and his constantly frail, often fasting, physical state, the most poignant selections show Gandhi adhering to the simple life he espoused: eating, shaving, spinning, travelling and speaking, or with unbearable pathos, watching over his dead wife's body. Quirky gems include meeting Charlie Chaplin in London's East End, giving a "silent message" on his habitual day of silence to reporters who busily seem to scribble it down, and, after his assassination, his funeral procession being given, with grim irony, a military salute. While Louis Fischer's The Life of Mahatma Gandhi provides an authoritative, contextualised analysis, Gandhi frames his extraordinary life with a simplicity and warmth that goes some way to explaining the reverence he inspired, and why, when he died, Nehru spoke not just for India in lamenting that "the light has gone out of our lives". --David Vincent

Review:

"For anyone truly inspired by one of the greatest men that ever walked the earth, this comprehensive biography of the Mahatma is a must."―Garavi Gujarat

"...Allow[s] us an intimate insight into the life of one of the 20th century's great figures."―Sunday Times Magazine

"This is a history book with a difference. It brings Gandhi to a new generation of readers. Some wonderful old photographs tell a great story and a perceptive new text shows Gandhi, the man who struggled to live up to ideals despite the contradictions that dogged him in his personal and political life."―Swagat

About this edition

• Publisher: Phaidon Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 071484103X
• ISBN 13: 9780714841038
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320