RICHARD BRANSONISSU

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When I arrived to New York, in 1983, I came

directly to SoHo. I met Christo a couple of

days after being there and we quickly became

friends. He needed somebody to take care

of his next project, happening in Paris in ’85.

Through this, I became completely immersed

in the downtown Manhattan art scene.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were having din-

ners with everybody from Andy Warhol to

Robert Rauschenberg. One of the people I

met through them was Isamu Noguchi, who

was a beautiful, gentle soul.

Noguchi and I talked a lot, and I told him

about my love of photography. At the time I

had given it up, because coming to the U.S.,

I was surviving in a different way. I was a

private art dealer, selling Christo’s work.

Noguchi told me, “Simon, if you love pho-

tography so much, why aren’t you doing it?”

As soon as I sold a couple of Christo’s pieces,

I bought cameras and got into it again. I was

able to find a space on Mercer Street where

I lived for 25 years. It was large enough to

make my own darkroom studio.

The Jantar Mantar, a series of five ancient

sundials spread across India, was a place

that influenced Noguchi’s playgrounds. After

hearing all of his stories about it, I happened

to go to India in 1995. I, of course, looked up

the Jantar Mantar and went to photograph it.

It’s a museum, basically, that was developed

in the 18th century. I just fell in love with the

spaces. The challenge for me, because I love

playing with the negative space, was finding

a way to abstract it, while also enhancing all

the beautiful shapes of these instruments.

And because it’s a museum and a lot of

Indians go, people were everywhere.

It was all shot during the day, because

you only get that real contrast and shadow

when the light is really strong. Shooting in

black-and-white gets rid of all the noise.

I just waited. I’d see a group of people

coming along and sit down. They’d leave

and I’d have a one- or two-minute opportu-

nity. I’d take one shot and move to another

place. It took me four days to get the pho-

tographs. I have the patience needed for

that because I’ve worked for a wonderful

Buddhist teacher.

The Jantar Mantar is a whole collection

of instruments built on the same principle:

astronomy. There’s one in Jaipur, one in Delhi,

and one in Varanasi. There are five total—the

other two are in Ujjain and Mathura. The one

in Varanasi is in bad shape and very difficult

to photograph. So I didn’t do it. The other two

are nearly destroyed.

I have only one color photograph of the

Jantar Mantar—the one in Delhi—which I

shot because it looks so special and every-

body who sees it thinks it’s a painting. It’s

a deep red. The one in Jaipur is sort of a

yellow ochre color. In Delhi, all the marble

has been taken away; what’s left is concrete

that’s repainted every few years. It’s rather

decrepit. Just by looking at these photo-

graphs, you know what you’re looking at.

These photographs will be published in the

book Jantar Mantar (Nazraeli Press), coming

out this fall.

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