Most people meet and view the works of writers through their books, artists in galleries, and photographers across their advertising and editorial work in magazines and newspapers. It was serendipity, therefore, that came together in the making of Portrait of an Artist, a book that pits individual vulnerabilities and strengths in the places where the work is actually created—the studio (or, in my case, the study), the space artists opened out for Rohit Chawla to venture in with his camera and me with my questions to explore the relationship between the artist and the studio, the photographer and the artist, with the writer a fly on the wall.
Working on the book was simultaneously easy and hard; most artists were generous in allowing us in into this most intimate and sacred of their spaces where few have ever had access. It was here we discovered their parallel, other, alternative lives, a place where they could be themselves, to create the art that defines their public lives. Here they were playful, focused, intense, indulgent, curious, experimental, brooding, frustrated, liberated, imprisoned, free, sometimes all at once, as they danced to hip-hop, read in concentration, listened to Bollywood or Kumar Gandharva, tackled different mediums and subjects, slept by day and worked by night, locked away for at least a time from friends, families, and the outside world.
I had the good fortune of having spent time with several artists, having previously met or interviewed or even been entertained in their studios. Spread throughout India, Rohit had his task cut out for him as he travelled across cities and towns, matching his schedules with those of the artists who had to accommodate him amidst their travels and the pressure of ongoing or upcoming exhibitions. I met those I could in their studios separately, though a few could only be interviewed over video and even sometimes telephone calls. As the project grew, and we realised the significance of what we were undertaking, it dawned on us that it was documentatively important to include at least a few artists who were no more amidst us (though Rohit fortunately had photographs of at least some of them), so we decided to source pictures from elsewhere. Writing specifically on their studio experiences was trickier, so I resorted to the ingeniously imaginative in culling together their thoughts from previous interviews and letters to cohere them hopefully contextually.
It was gratifying when KNMA came forward to support the publication and Kiran Nadar wrote a sensitive foreword to the book. The handy size, the exclusively black and white photographs, the succinct text, the excellent printing achieved at Archana Advertising’s printing press, and publisher Mapin’s contribution to the overall quality are reasons the book has created a benchmark for the reader as well as the art world.
What Rohit and I both discovered through the making of the book was an artistic world that has always been mysterious, magical, and intriguing. The spell hasn’t quite left us though the book is now complete and in the hands of of its intended readers. If they can find some of the joys and apprehensions we experienced while outing the artists in their innermost sanctum sanctorums with the honesty they received and shared with us, we would consider our jobs well done.