Passing By, 2002 In 2002, Thomas’s first solo exhibition titled
Passing By was shown at the
Alliance Francaises in Thiruvananthapuram, Pondicherry, Chandigarh, Bangalore and
New Delhi. The images in the exhibition were photographed over a period of two months in Western Europe in 1999.
Well, Basically This is About Thomas Jacob, 2003 In 2003, Thomas took a series of photographs of his father culminating in a show titled
Well, Basically This is About Thomas Jacob. The work chronicled nine months in Thomas's father's life who he followed and documented in Kerala,
Tamil Nadu and the UK. The 500 black and white images are projected on two screens facing one another. The subject is treated formally and the series depicts empty interiors of these nightclubs where modestly dressed women dance for men in exchange for cash. The work was presented as a digital slideshow with slowly changing stills of these evocative venues that though devoid of human presence seemed alive with movement.
Light Life questions the diktat to shut these bars; many ex-dancers were obliged to seek the very employment the censure sought to discourage. In the course of the next few weeks, most of the catalogues disappeared from the library. There are sixteen cameras installed in the NCA library to prevent acts of theft/vandalism.
New Friends unfolds as a sequence of portraits of people Thomas met for the first time. In the images, the 'sitter' often determined the manner in which he or she was presented – making choices about the settings, interiors, and poses adopted. The work, titled
Metropolitan comprised a series of fourteen large format photographs of Episcopalian bishops. The portraits are staged using a common visual strategy – posing in their vestments before their official residences. Thomas singled out the heads of the Episcopal churches, the bishops who have spiritual and administrative powers over their respective dioceses. Born and raised in a family belonging to one of the denominations represented in the series, Thomas's enquiry into the plural practice of modern-day Christianity unveils the hierarchies within these denominations. The show worked as an installation with red plastic chairs placed as though for an official function facing a screen on which were projected a series of photographs, each one of a mundane Kerala street scene framed by a temporary arch of the type typically constructed in the state to announce a social, religious, political or commercial function. The transition between the images was done using a common digital transitional device whereby the image collapsed in a centripetal swirl and re-emerged similarly. The twirl becomes a key to the work, directing and intervening on the rhythms of the viewers' gaze. The series of nine images, taken over three years, depict events, structures and people and were a satirical and poignant exploration of the subtle and uncanny changes dispersed upon his native Kerala. Contained in his photographs are references to Kerala's attempts to create a bridge between its past and its present, starting from the legacy of
Henry Valentine Conolly, the collector of British Malabar, who set up the world's first teak plantation in Kerala in the 1840s. This examination as with most work in Thomas’s practice centres on the cultural
history of Kerala. “
Ithikkara Bridge", an image of a plaque that serves as a memorial stone emphasises a transition from life to death as well as elaborates the idea of passage The collection is enhanced with instants of the personal encroaching on the scientific with inclusions such as the remains of Shikamoni’s pet dog. ==References==