Atul Kasbekar's Exhibition, Honest, Finds The Person Behind The Performance

Kasbekar has spent thirty-five years building India's most aspirational visual language across magazine covers, more than ten editions of the Kingfisher Calendar, movies and advertising campaigns for virtually every major brand in the country. His first instinct for HONEST: Portraits of Character, his first solo exhibition, was more of the same. "Shadowy window light, meaningful stare, maybe a strategically placed plume of cigarette smoke," he explains. "The whole cinematic package." 

Then he realised the world had seen those pictures before. So he stripped everything: "What remained," he says, "was a direct, occasionally uncomfortable, completely unfiltered connection with the subject."

Running at Jio World Plaza from June 5 to July 5, the show features fifty-six large-format black and white portraits of actors from every strata of Bollywood - Anupam Kher, Pankaj Tripathi, Naseeruddin Shah, Neena Gupta, Kalki Koechlin, Boman Irani, and others, each shot in his Worli studio against a plain white background, under a single light, with zero retouching. It’s an exhibition that took three years in the making. "At its heart," says Kasbekar, "the exhibition is about removing performance to reveal character." 

We sat down with the master photographer for a quick chat on his exhibition, his inspirations and the process behind it.

Honest: Portraits of Character shines the light (albeit in black and white) on faces people think they know. What did you want to explore with this exhibition?

Kasbekar: I realised that while almost everyone would recognise these faces, connecting a face to a name was not always a given. Which felt unfair considering the ridiculous levels of talent involved.

As a producer, I have had a front row seat to watching these actors work and honestly, it is staggering. The devotion to the craft, the amount of themselves they leave on the field every single time.

So this became my way of addressing that.

At its heart, the exhibition is about removing performance to reveal character. Less a spotlight on me and more a hat tip. Or perhaps a very large monochrome thank you.

You’ve spent decades making people look their most aspirational. Why take on a project like this now?

Kasbekar: When I started, my first instinct was to photograph people in their homes. And I am sure I would have made perfectly respectable portraits. Shadowy window light, meaningful stare, maybe a strategically placed plume of cigarette smoke. The whole cinematic package.

But then I realised we have all seen those pictures before, in some variant anyway. So I stripped everything away. No elaborate lighting, no props, no environment to explain the person.

What remained was a direct, occasionally uncomfortable, completely unfiltered connection with the subject. The photographer and the technique took a deliberate backseat.

The subject ended up where they should be. Front and centre.

Did you have any other photographers or works in mind when you made Honest?

Kasbekar: Not consciously at first. But the deeper I went into this idea, the more compelling I found the honesty of stark portraits against white backgrounds.

Then I remembered a photography school obsession: the great Richard Avedon.

His ‘In the American West’ work remains an eye-opener in how much can happen when you stop trying so hard. It is a masterclass in less is more and in trusting that character arrives when performance leaves.

Walk us through how you landed on the final 56 artists you portrayed in Honest.

Kasbekar: A fair few I knew personally, and a bunch were recommended by Yash Nagarkoti, casting director and founder of CastInk.

Like most worthwhile projects, this one was built on the generosity of collaborators and friends who believed in the idea and helped shape it.

How did you decide how these portraits are arranged and experienced?

Kasbekar: We wanted the works spread across two levels of the stunning Jio World Plaza. Partly because the scale allowed it, but mostly because I wanted to demystify the experience of viewing art. Remove some of the polite intimidation that can come with galleries and museums. No hushed reverence required.

The idea was to keep the viewing democratic. People wandering through, discovering faces, stopping when something catches.

The sequencing was done with input from the JWP team to sustain curiosity as people move through the space.

What does this work look like to you now versus when you first envisioned it?

Kasbekar: To be perfectly honest, and I apologise in advance for the pun, I could not imagine better partners than Jio World Plaza.

Once they decided this was worth backing, they threw everything at it. Including, metaphorically speaking, the kitchen sink. Even in my most optimistic version of events, I do not think I imagined this scale or level of commitment.

What does Honest: Portraits of Character ask of the people in it, and of the people standing in front of it?

Kasbekar: I asked every artist to give me a quote to sit beside their portrait. Something that mattered to them. A belief, a lesson, an idea they carry around. It felt more interesting than listing awards or career highlights. You can Google those (he laughs).

The hope was to offer glimpses into these exceptional people that might not surface otherwise. And because none of the portraits are retouched, perhaps there is also a small reality check in there about what people actually look like.

I happen to think the lines on our faces are less imperfections and more evidence. Scars, medals, receipts... proof of a life lived properly.

Some battles won, some lost.