Mark Bennington turned his gaze to India the year he turned 40. He’d worked for a number of years before that in Los Angeles as a commercial photographer. At the turn of the new millennium’s first decade, Bennington needed to do something different. The pursuit of creativity took Bennington from an L.A. rock band (as a drummer for five years) to acting, and, eventually, to photography. In 2010, he came to India and began capturing the behind-the-scenes lives (as much as can be made available to a photographer) of Hindi film stars.
Mumbai calling
The results of Bennington’s five-year endeavour are now available in Living the Dream: The Life of the ‘Bollywood’ Actor, published recently by HarperCollins. The book is a photographic journal comprising 112 candid photographs of various actors in the industry, arranged in no particular order. Most portraits are accompanied by short interviews with the image’s subject, lending further insight into working, and surviving, in the industry. “I was strictly against a table of contents, or even ordering the subjects by, say, films, theatre, or television,” says Bennington. “The idea was to represent every branch of the tree. My [modus operandi] is to be a unifying artist, because I believe we’re all in this together.”
Renowned National Geographic photographer David Alan Harvey had originally suggested that Bennington undertake a project photographing life in Hollywood. The idea evolved into a Hollywood-Bollywood juxtaposition, eventually becoming a purely Bollywood-centric project. “I realised it could stand on its own, and didn’t need to be compared to anything else,” says Bennington.
Bennington mostly shoots with a wide-angle, 24mm lens, and one is tempted to make an immediate, unflattering comparison with the legendary lensman Emmanuel Lubezki, whose wide-angle still portraits of characters from The Revenant became a rage a couple of years ago. The most striking images in the book are those evidenced by the passage of time. For instance, one features Swara Bhaskar seen reading a script on a crowded Mumbai local train. “I tried to showcase a variety of actors at various stages of their career. Some have, of course, become stars by the time this book has been published. You would never see Swara on a local train now.”
Little-known actors
It’s Bennington’s showcase of little-known actors that stands out; thereby giving them a place the mainstream denies. Sadly, they appear infrequently. Instead, one cannot help but notice that the book’s preface, written by Karan Johar, and the afterword, written by Shanoo Sharma, further indict an industry already under fire for favouring the favoured, and for its perpetual enchantment with Hollywood.
To his credit, Bennington readily admits that his Bollywood access was due to his L.A. background, right from Guneet Monga, whose sea-facing apartment we’re sitting in, to Sharma, a casting director at Yash Raj Films. “To me it seemed that life was just happening, you know. I was knocking on doors and the doors were opening. It’s only later I was told that if I were an unknown, local photographer, I’d never have the access I received.”
It’s tempting to argue that Bennington made the wrong call. For a country where Hindi films enjoy pre-eminence, and where images of Bollywood actors are ubiquitous in magazines, newspapers, and on the Internet, Bennington’s book is only mildly interesting. The additional flavour of Hollywood, a more distant and interesting world than we’re familiar with, would have added immensely to the Living the Dream … ’s holding power.
Fleeting moments
And it’s easy to sympathise with, but difficult to fully appreciate Bennington’s project. After all, the interesting moments, like Bhaskar’s image, are far too fleeting. Some portraits, like those of Dev Anand or Salman Khan, quickly fade from memory. Occasionally, a tender moment arrives: Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak Shah focusing intently backstage; Ranbir Kapoor’s eyes staring somewhat morosely into the camera as he holds a script in his hands, even as the crew around him looks bored.
In his soft voice and with a steady twinkle in his eyes, Bennington insists that his attempt was to humanise the actors, not de-glamourise them. “This is the reality of the dream. This is what it really looks like, the ordinary life of a Bollywood star. I was going to say it’s not like I’m going to show them seated on the toilet, but I do have that,” he says, referring to a photograph of Nargis Fakhri getting ready in her bathroom. “These are stars, un-Photoshopped, unedited. It’s not to show them in a bad light, or in a greedy way.”
This statement could very well encapsulate the paradox of Living the Dream: The Life of the ‘Bollywood’ Actor . It is neither high art, nor exceptional spur-of-the-moment photography. It neither explores the excesses of stardom, nor the depths of despair of those who don’t make it. Emotionally, its centre appears strangely grounded, unmoved by the passions of those it documents.
On three subjects
Ranveer Singh: When I shot it, I knew it would be the cover. It was madness chasing him to get this photograph. I waited for an hour to take his photograph, and then almost didn’t get it. I somehow managed to evade his bodyguards and snap three quick shots before he grabbed a rope and disappeared onto the stage
Irrfan: I really like his work as an actor. I find him fascinating to watch, to look at his movements. I like watching the way people move because it articulates their behaviour. His is one of my favourite portraits in the book.
Sonam Kapoor: She’s a gorgeous woman, but behaves like a tomboy. That makes her interesting. What I ultimately captured is a combination of the facets of her personality: a beautiful woman in chappals looking pathetically bored on set after discovering that it would take two more hours for the set to be ready