India seen through Dayanita's lens

THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED ON THE INDIAN EXPRESS (US and Canada Circulation) -27 June 2008
SENT A LETTER
By Dayanita Singh
Steidl
Price: $90

The celebrated Indian photojournalist, Dayanita Singh's latest offering, Sent a Letter is a unique slip-cased set of seven very small and intimate accordion-folded pocket photo journals recounting her travels/journeys throughout India at different points in her life. Bombay, Devigarh, Padmanabhapuram, Allahabad, Calcutta, Varanasi and Nony Singh are the seven jewels of this collection.


Sent a letter to my friend, on the way he dropped it. Someone picked it up and put it in his pocket', printed on the hard-cover box gives the impression that each book was made by Dayanita as a gift for a friend, serving as a souvenir of the time spent with that person or of a time when that person was on her mind.The viewer is also made to feel that she creates two copies of each book - of which one is sent to the friend (that is dropped on the way) while the other remains with her.

Each book carries a minimum of 14 and a maximum of 27 B&W photographs. Like her last small book Go Away Closer, there is no text or caption with the photos to guide the viewer in this collection. May be Singh expects her audience to do some homework and decipher the hidden messages that these images conceal or perhaps wants them to have the liberty to interpret, as they want.

Six of these seven books have a distinct flavor of the historic past of the cities they represent. It's evident from Singh's repertoire that she's entirely in love with the old images and is therefore, reluctant in capturing the changing face of these Indian cities, brought about by the seeds of modernism & globalization.

The seventh book Nony Singh is completely different from the rest and is given a distinguishably darker cover. It carries a series of skillfully taken photos by Dayanita's mother Nony Singh. This collection of her family photos also provides a sneak peek at the growing years of Dayanita.

Dayanita, 47, born and brought up in Delhi, has been making small photo journals of her travels across different Indian cities for quite some time now. Several of her works have been showcased in different museums and shows in India and abroad. But this is the first time, her works are being published in this format globally.



Allahabad opens with an image of two men in what appears to be a museum dedicated to Jawaharlal Nehru. The book progresses through different rooms that may have been his sitting room, bedroom and library. One spread of two photographs shows visitors entrapped behind the glass partitions as they peer at Nehru's bed and belongings.

The book entitled Calcutta features the publisher Gerhard Steidl himself on a visit through the city. Down the memory lane we visit the Book Bazar of College Street (the haven for book lovers in Calcutta), the famous Howrah Bridge, the plush Grand Hotel and several other glimpses that are so typical of the City of Joy we knew as opposed to what we see now.

The book Padmanabhapuram opens with photos of tribal people statuettes in glass cases, leading to a photo of a skeleton, which perhaps depicts the story of their disappearance. This is followed by a few photographs of seascapes made at dusk with heavy cloud filled skies and then of photographs of rooms in which the flooring shines like blackened water.

In Varanasi, Dayanita chooses to ignore the more commonly perceived image of the city as the ultimate refuge for Hindu pilgrims and instead paints the diabolical portrait of the common practices that the world know of. She shows the child widows and captures both the dreary as well as the happy moments of their otherwise mundane and hapless lives.

Despite Singh's mixed academic background (studied in India and US) there is a remarkable difference in which she visualizes the plight of the commoners in contrast to her western counterparts. Rather than showing the pitiful surroundings of slum dwellers or the hardships that the child widows face, she arrests the predicament in their facial expressions.

In this series, Dayanita, once again establishes that an eye for details, a keen power of observation and the ability to extract the subtleties of everyday life that escapes common vision, distinguishes a mere photographer from an artist. The only complaint that one might have after browsing her mails is that in an attempt to become consumer-friendly by turning such great works of art into tiny pocket-books, the finer details, quality and the true essence of the photos might be lost to a considerable extent.