"An image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced. It is an appearance or a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its ap-pearance and preserved for a few moments or a few centuries". A carefully crafted corpus of argument? A self-indulgent intellectual revelry? Or mere reaction to a sudden visitation of spirits …. Spirits who scare the most retiring emotions out of the deepest crevices of the mind ….. Adequately credible answers have never risen - often enough, at any rate – to square off against these questions. So, in art, for now, the questions continue to be the sole franchisees of intellectual exhilaration. And when Michel MARUCA, a French photographer, offers yet another set of sharp queries in his “IMAGinE the streets” exhibition, it is an occasion to rejoice. The photographs are the result of a sporadic documentation of the vibrant streets of Hyderabad. The photographs have been treated by two successive illuminations of MARUE’s mind. The first is represented by his choice of what to shoot. And the second is represented by the computer manipulations of the original pictures. Working in consent, the two ‘treat-ments’ create a dimension beyond the standard imaginings. MARUCA’s images are subtle and, more important, playful. This aspect will make “IMAGinE” accessible to even those who may not be art aficionados. And the discerning will be transfixed by the transformation of the mundane into a stirring icon of the unexpected. Indeed, after MARUCA’s interventions, the people on the street who unhesitatingly volunteered to model for him, seem to belong to a magical, bewitching realm. A realm far removed from their native environment. Such is the power that comes from enlarging a single carefully chosen element within the original frame. Children, nature and streets are Maruca’s tree subjects.