Dayanita Singh, born In 1961, is an internationally known photographer. Her entry into the world of photography was more by accident than design. As a child, she was irritated at being ‘held up’ for pictures by her mother, Noni Singh, an enthusiastic amateur with a Zeiss Ikon (medium format) camera. In retrospect, Dayanita’s mother’s photographs reveal a lyrical talent that might have blossomed, had she, been free of her duties as a wife and mother to nurture it. Dayanita’s interest in photography may not have come from her mother, but her talent for it certainly has.
Penguin Studio in collaboration with Fundacion Mapfre, a Spanish cultural institution, has brought out a handsomely printed volume comprising a selection of Dayanita’s Black & White photographs (primarily) and with two photo-essays in colour. It is, like most well printed books on photography, extremely expensive, therefore, way beyond the reach of the average photo-enthusiast. This complaint aside, Dayanita’s work not only tells us which way she is headed as a photographer — her work looked outwards when she began, and then over time, inwards as she gathered more experience of life — it also gives us a fairly accurate idea about the current preoccupations of those photographers who have chosen to concentrate on the photo essay as their primary medium of expression.
This book is really a selection from her various photo essays done over a period of time. Historian Sunil Khilnani and poet Aveek Sen have contributed their thoughts to facilitate the reader’s, as well as their own, understanding of the photographs. Her training at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, and her first encounter with tabla maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain at a concert in the city, where she fell down after being pushed from behind while taking a photograph, when she had shouted saying that she was being mistreated because she was a student, and that she too would be remembered when she became famous, changed her life. Zakir Husain graciously invited her to take pictures in his hotel room while he practised. She went and then followed him and his fellow musicians for the next six seasons. The dedicated effort resulted in a book that made her famous. “Zakir is my Guru”, she still says with gratitude.
Dayanita went to study at the International Centre for Photography in New York, founded by the venerable photographer Cornell Capa, brother of the legendary war photographer Robert Capa, who died in 1954 in French-occupied Vietnam after the battle of Dien Bien Phu, which the communist Vietnamese forces won under General Vo Nguyen Giap. Her training at ICP proved invaluable. She saw the works of the masters, particularly, American. In fact, some of her photographs of empty rooms and unoccupied spaces included in this volume are reminiscent of Walker Evans, who was called, “The greatest photographer of empty rooms”. She has also ingested the lessons learnt from Mary Ellen Marks’ work, whom she met in Varanasi.
Dayanita’s sensitive handling of women, exemplified in the section, “I Am As I Am” does show her taking a bow in Mary Ellen Mark’s direction. Having said that, one must also say that she has a way of establishing a rapport with her subject: The girls in this photo essay seem remarkably free before her camera. A more challenging assignment perhaps, in the matter of winning the trust of the person being photographed is “Myself Mona Ahmed”, a transvestite woman on whom she has done a book. If the pictures in “I Am As I Am” are as lyrical as the frames in the early Satyajit Ray films like Aparajito, then pictures from “Myself Mona Ahmed” have a tougher feel, not unlike the images in Ritwik Ghatak’s first film, Nagarik. Dayanita’s pictures evoke memories and associations.
The ladies, young and old, from “The Ladies of Calcutta” seem to be remembering happier times; even the young in these pictures seem wistful about something lost. In the mind’s eye they make the cultural leap to become belles from crumbling plantations in the (north) American deep south. The pictures here are obviously posed but they have a strong sentimental, even emotional pull akin to the better novels about the American ‘Confederate’ country. The world that the photographer has captured here is in the process of disappearing forever from our eyes. This part of the book reminds us very strongly that photography, principally, is about capturing fugitive memories.
The last part has two essays in colour which Dayanita handles with a certain nonchalance. Desolate factory sites seen through a blue-grey haze, vacant rooms with disused machinery from where human presence has taken leave quite a while ago constitute the part titled, “Blue Book”. The theme of desolation and loneliness, not to speak of despair, underline the part entitled , “Dream Villa”. Dayanita Singh’s photographic world is, to this beholder, a world of sadness, of lost hopes and nostalgia. It is both evocative and addictive, which, to say the least, is a dangerous mix.
— PC