1. What is your earliest memory of how or what attracted you to photography?
My father, an oncologist, made many pictures as I was growing up – landscapes, portraits, family pictures – initially with a completely mechanical Nikon SLR and later with an electronic and auto (but still analog) Canon SLR. All of this, of course, was long ago – from when I was a child being ordered to pose, through starting to refuse as an adolescent, to becoming interested enough to try using the camera myself.
I remember when Dad got his first digital camera, a little before I left for college. It was a small 1.2 megapixel Sony Cybershot; this camera got passed on to me a year or two later, when he upgraded. It really started me photographing.
2. What made you pick up the camera? What made you decide that you wanted to become a photographer?
I finished my graduation in economics and worked for almost a year in different jobs. My dad had given me the above camera when he got a new one, and I’d began photographing in my last years of college. I made some small prints just before graduating and these small, cheap lambda prints from the lab around the corner – blurry night pictures as I leaned out of cars to photograph – took on a massive attraction over the course of a few months.
Soon enough, I’d saved up from the jobs I’d been doing and with some help from my dad, bought an entry level digital SLR in 2005. That really was the beginning for me. I would make hundreds of pictures every day, initially to understand the technicalities and effects of making images and the process of lensing. The decision to become a photographer came later, following a long backpacking trip around the UK & USA. I then moved to Noida in 2006 and started instinctively photographing it, realizing that what I really wanted to do was make images.
3. Are you self-taught as a photographer? If yes, how did you learn about the medium – the techniques, the language, and the aesthetics of it?
Starting out with a digital SLR, there’s really not too much stress about learning the technique. One can figure out a lot with dedication and experimentation. Technical books about photography are easy to access, too. Plus, I had the internet, which was an indispensable resource for learning and exposure.
The aesthetics and the history of the medium presented a more interesting challenge. At the time when I began getting serious, which was back in 2006, there were few blogs or websites to turn to, but that was beginning to change. Looking back, it seems to me that I was lucky, and a series of encounters led to my growth. A meeting with Bharat Sikka, whom I had hoped to assist, but didn’t qualify to (He advised me to go get a BFA, which I couldn’t really afford.), and the subsequent conversations helped lead me on a sometimes scary, but really interesting, existential quest with my work, and a search for meaning that catapulted me into my practice.
Sometime after, having fleshed out a lot of work and meeting Bharat a couple more times, but not really getting anywhere, I found PHOTOINK on the internet. Then they were an agency and about to become a gallery, as well, and I thought they’d be the best people to help guide me toward my next step. So I wrote the director, Devika Daulet-Singh, an impassioned email. This led to my meeting Robert Pledge, of Contact Press Images, and later Devika, who started to mentor me and allowed me access to the PHOTOINK library. For almost a whole year I would show up at PHOTOINK in Jhandewalan and peruse and read photography books all day. I was even given lunch and coffee and allowed to smoke in the kitchen as I educated and informed myself about the history of photography.
4. Do you think it is important to receive a formal training in photography?
Not entirely.
There’s certainly a lot of benefit to it – exposure, access, history, and not having to reinvent the wheel. But there’s a lot of inertia that comes from it too, especially the Western art school format. I think what’s most important is having the desire and curiosity to learn, read, and notice what happens around, to be aware of the web of influences and references; in short, to educate oneself continually, with or without the formality of a program.
5. If you were to design a photography program for young Indian photographers, what would it look like?
It would look like a cross between a degree and a workshop / mentorship format. The ideal program would have the rigor of a degree program and the freedom and independence of a mentorship, along with the condensed imparting of skill and exposure in the nature of a workshop.
6. Has your education in economics informed your thought process in any way? Your practice?
Absolutely! Along with an awareness of socio-economic elements, there’s a certain consideration of input and output that applies to material and even subject matter. This awareness has crept into my thought practice as a result of my economics background.
7. Do you work in analog or the digital?
All my personal work so far has been on medium format analog.
For my trilogy of night images, I like to explore what’s ordinarily concealed by darkness. This means exposing for a long period to be able to see what’s in darkness – exposing for shadows, basically, which ends up burning out the highlights when working digitally. However, on color negative film, even after sometimes exposing for hours for the shadows, I still have detail and information in the highlights that is possible to recover, as the negative film has a much higher dynamic range.
It’s also much better for making large prints (I print at 24×30 inches and 34×42 inches.) from a medium format negative, because the resolution and size of the image are much greater than what’s been achievable by 35mm digital, which is what I can afford.
All my commissioned work, however, is on digital, and recently I’ve been doing new personal work on digital, as well.
8. Digital technology has changed photography drastically over the last few years. Did you initially embrace the changes or resist them? Do you believe the changes have been good for the medium or not?
I began photographing on digital cameras and shifted later to working on the medium format. So, for me the digital transition was the other way around. It’s actually a lot easier to start photographing on a digital camera, however, the rigor, certainty, material constraints and delayed gratification (in the sense of waiting for developing before you can see images) of shooting on film have made me a better, more acute photographer.
Digital technology is inevitable and has proceeded at a fantastic rate of improvement. I certainly love it and am enthused by it. Rather than seeing it as good or not, in my opinion, the metric by which we should think is more of its utility; and that the ease of it should not be an excuse for lack of discipline and rigor.
9. What tends to draw you to work on a certain idea? Does it come as a gut feeling, or after analysis or research? Is it because of some memory? Or something that you are really concerned about?
I think it is a bit of all of the above. Certainly when I started photographing it was mostly gut. However, the further down that hole you go, the steeper the descent becomes, and as one grows one starts thinking about it. For me, it’s hard to work on anything that I’m not really concerned about. As a result, my work generally ends up being about the world I live in and my reaction to it; about some facet of my existence or thought process.
10. When you put together a series of images, what is your process while you are creating the narrative?
That’s a hard one to answer. Basically, for me, the narrative often is quite ephemeral and non linear. I suppose I start with a chronological edit / sequence that I then make categorical to help myself think about it. Later, I start jumbling and mixing, based on instinct and reading.
This is where working with an editor or gallerist, or even a trusted fellow practitioner, artist, or friend helps. Many times, I don’t see some things or connections in my pictures till someone else picks up on them.
11. Please share a bit about the project that you are working on now. Why are you making this work?
I’ve been working on Broken Hills for the last several years and, at the moment, am no longer photographing for it. It started out as a sort of lament for mountains lost. I’ve almost exclusively been photographing quarries (as opposed to mines) all over the country – looking at how mountains, entire ranges sometimes, have been disappearing. Imagine a mountain, an ancient metaphor for permanence, whittled away to nothing within a handful of years.
12. While working on projects, do they typically run in parallel or do you focus on one project at a time?
Generally, I have several projects ongoing, at different speeds and stages in their lives; several of which might never see the light outside of the studio cupboard or hard-drive.
13. Who or what has inspired you to pursue photography and/or continues to do so?
I kind of stumbled onto photography and it took me by the scruff, so to speak. I guess the act of image making, and the effect it can have continues to inspire me. There can be something to seeing an image, or a set of them, that influences and expands one’s worldview. You see things in the world sometimes that you first saw in an image, and there is something quite ground-shaking and paradigm-altering about this. To be able to create this for more than just myself is what repeatedly brings me back to photography.
14. Is there a book, an exhibition or a body of work that has really impressed you and maybe even influenced your work / life?
I’m a rather voracious reader; usually I prefer science fiction and fantasy, but I read almost anything, from non-fiction and history to essays and art criticism. Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen, a ten-book epic fantasy saga has deeply left itself on my mind and life. I think that in terms of world building, scale, and emotional gravitas, nothing else has come close to this. Over the years I have read and reread this series many times.
I really like the Bechers and the Dusseldorf school and feel a certain kinship with them; also Kertez, Hatakeyama, and Brassai have been a continued influence.
15. Could you describe a time when you found yourself creatively ‘stuck?’ If yes, then how did you come around to dealing with it?
Well, I’m kind of coming out of a few years of minimal production and generally low swampy stuckness that arose due to several personal factors that I’d rather not get into. Basically, I’ve not made much work, and whatever I have made in the last couple of years has seemed like shit; but I’ve turned around to accepting it and allowing myself that. And I’ve been trying to just keep doing what excites and interests me.
I think I’m just making it out of this ‘stuck’ phase. I don’t know yet for sure, of course, but having returned to what excited me about my process, and doing several new things along the way, has helped rekindle the spark. I guess the thing that worked for me was going back to what excites me about my practice and allowing myself the space to get to it.
16. How do you measure success or that a body of work is going well?
It’s difficult to measure how a body of work is going. Sometimes one’s own sense of it can be a bit too close and personal, so it’s great to have colleagues and mentors whose opinions one trusts. I mostly obsess and work on ideas and projects until I feel that I can’t really make any more work, I then consolidate and start to edit. I do think that I’m not a particularly good editor of my work, so I definitely benefit from working with editors or my gallery.
17. How much effort do you put into getting your work shown? Is this important to you? If so, why? Does showing your work feed your creative process or does it distract from it?
I’d say showing work is fairly important – not paramount, but ideal. Nothing exists in isolation, so in a sense, to show it is to make it real. By ‘show’ I mean not just an exhibition, but also any outlet that makes it visible to the world, be it a magazine, a website, a book, or blog.
That said, I’m definitely cautious about not showing my work prematurely, I like to fully or mostly realize an idea before I bring it into the world. Also, I think the way something is shown is a major part of the work itself; so, in a sense, the showing completes the work. One can show an excerpt from ongoing work and that’s great to get feedback etc; but the final work is really only complete when it is shown in its final form, and that’s only arrived at in the process of the showing.
18. Do you feel that there are adequate opportunities and avenues to share / show your work in India, or do you always look for such opportunities abroad?
I’ve actually been looking less to show of late, but have been noticing that the avenues available seem to be increasing dramatically in our country. From when I started more than ten years ago, there was no photo festival in India really, and only a couple of galleries even showing photography. Contrast that with today, when there are many festivals and several galleries. Abroad, of course, there are more opportunities but there is also a larger gulf to bridge.
19. Do you think there is a universal language that photography uses? Are South Asian photographers finding that they are judged by western criteria and standards?
What exactly is the photographic language? Is any language truly universal? Don’t they all borrow and lend the vocabulary with each other, and isn’t that vocabulary constantly expanding as the human experience expands?
The above are just some questions that arise in my mind when trying to answer this question.
There is certainly an almost universal syntax to photography in the sense of the means and constraints of its making – the effects of lensing are rather universal. However, I think that the context of a photograph adds a lot to the reading of them and that can be pan-universal, while simultaneously being hyper local. The key, I think, is really in the thing itself. Photographs, if you look closely enough and across a body of work, show a lot of the why and how of their making. A popular adage comes to mind – the more personal you make it the more universal it becomes – an apparent contradiction that often easily resolves itself in the immediacy and reality of experience.
I don’t know about Indian photographers, but certainly for me, when presenting in the West, I’ve been judged and perceived by Western standards. As an example, my pictures of sleepers often led Westerners to think that these people were homeless and poor, but further inspection would reveal things at odds with that reading – that the way I’ve tried to make the images doesn’t seem to speak about poverty, but rather the interplay between the public and the private, and about dreaming under stars and open skies. In India, of course, sleeping outside is a common phenomenon and not just restricted to the poor or the homeless.
20. In addition to your fine art photography / personal photography, do you teach or do commercial photography or any other related work in order to supplement your income?
I do a bit of commercial work, whenever assignments find me, which is not as often as I’d like. For a few years, I’ve been teaching, or rather conducting workshop-type classes, though I’m taking a break from it at the moment. I find that it’s really exhausting to teach, being sort of responsible for young minds.
21. With your years of experience, of the lessons you have learned, what is the one thing you wish someone had told you when you were starting out?
To keep at it and not really listen to anyone else over one’s own gut. And, basically, to keep at it. Really that’s the only thing one can do, to keep at it, in the making and the looking and the thinking. That’s what I still remind myself to continue to do.
22. If you didn’t do photography, what is the next best thing you would like to be doing?
Get paid for playing computer games and reading books! Seriously though, it would probably be something with computers.
23. How would an interested collector go about buying your work?
I don’t make print sales directly. Any interested collector would be best served by writing to PHOTOINK at gallery@photoink.net.
[This interview was conducted prior to the global pandemic.]
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Copyright © Dhruv Malhotra
20 November