When Waswo X Waswo first arrived in India, he was already an artist, but Udaipur, where the American-born photographer and painter has lived for over two decades, profoundly shaped his practice, drawing him into traditional Indian miniature painting and prompting him to question the act of looking. At LATITUDE 28 in Delhi, his solo exhibition, Long Short Stories, explores history, intimacy, and belonging through photographs hand-tinted and painted over in collaboration with miniature painter Dalpat Jingar and his brother Banti Jingar, who adds gold-leaf borders and intricate detailing. The works weave a fantastical tale of a flamboyant Dandy travelling from the West, or the Distant Land, to an imagined Ancient Land inspired by Udaipur, where his fascination with a Prince evolves into intimacy, rivalry, and exile. Armed with a telescope, binoculars, a magnifying glass, and a camera, the Dandy embodies the curious, often comical foreign observer, while the Prince introduces him to an ancient magic rooted in the land.
Through the Dandy and the Prince, Waswo explores how personal experiences disappear into silence, eventually becoming fragments of memory or myth. The fictional narrative also reflects his own relationship with Udaipur, which he describes as his personal Shangri-La. Yet he acknowledges that his adopted home is not without its complications. “There have been intrigues, scandals, liaisons, romance, frustrations, and every other event and condition that affects the human heart. Yet, in the end, all of these total up to an additional attachment to ‘The Ancient City’.”
Waswo’s practice has long engaged with Orientalism and the history of Western representations of India. However, he insists that his recurring character, once described as the “Evil Orientalist”, was never intended simply as a figure of ridicule. “My intention was never to ridicule the so-called ‘Evil Orientalist’... my intentions were to humanise him, creating a character that has both good and bad elements.” Initially drawn from his own experiences, the figure has evolved into an everyman, “sometimes a clueless foreigner, but also sometimes spiritual and wise”. In Long Short Stories, the Dandy embodies this contradiction: a flamboyant but well-meaning traveller whose curiosity is both endearing and absurd. Waswo describes him as a Victorian-style naturalist and student of culture who has come to learn “in his clueless, comical way”.
This approach also informs his response to criticism that his work romanticises India through a “white gaze”. “Why should India not be depicted as beautiful and even magical?” he asks. “Foreign artists are condemned if they depict India’s poverty, and also condemned if they depict India’s beauties and charms. There is no winning.” Uninterested in documentary realism, Waswo prefers the imaginative possibilities of art. “There is a crazy insistence these days that all photography is documentary, and all art political. I don’t buy into that notion. My art is personal and playful.”
That literary sensibility has been present since his early photographic series, India Poems. Today, his collaborations with miniature painters allow him to move beyond photography’s claim to record reality, creating images in which observation gives way to invention. The resulting works challenge viewers to consider how images shape the stories we tell about people and places.
Having lived in India for more than two decades, Waswo feels accepted by its art world but remains conscious of the limits of belonging. “I’m no longer an outsider in the artworld. Most of India’s artworld has very much accepted me, and I am extremely grateful for that. However, I know that I will never be an Indian,” he says. While acknowledging India’s influence on his artistic evolution, he is equally clear that his career began long before he arrived. “My art evolved here for sure, but it was not invented here.”
With publications including India Poems: The Photographs, Men of Rajasthan and Karkhana: A Studio in Rajasthan, and works held in collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Waswo has established a practice that moves between photography, painting and storytelling. In Long Short Stories, these strands converge in a tale whose unresolved ending is central to its meaning. The Dandy and the Prince disappear into exile, leaving behind only fragments of a story that history may never recover. For Waswo, what remains untold can be as significant as what is remembered.