1. What is your earliest memory of how or what attracted you to photography?
While studying graphic design, and later working in films, I had used the camera as a note-taking device that fueled those media. During this time, I had seen a handful of photography books that were available in Banaras and Delhi, in the early 2000s. They were mostly street photography, aside from the glossy color images of National Geographic. So there was some familiarity with image making. Though it was really the possibility of being by myself, solo, and photographing without having to rely on commissions and a production budget that drew me to the medium.
2. How do you feel your MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies has informed your practice?
The MFA program exposed me to various veins of image making and theories in and around the medium. Consequently, I began thinking of photography as a vehicle for exploring and engaging with my queries. Sometimes it was the most appropriate tool and, at other times, I used other media, like blueprints, video, and drawing. So, in deepening my understanding of the photographic medium, the education actually helped me understand its limitations and opened me to other modes of thinking. It also provided a space for developing a language around photography through weekly critiques, and fostered deep friendships with other students as we all went through the two years of the program. So, in some ways, it provided an instant community. Although, over the years, life has taken us in many different directions, I have collaborated with a number of my peers since graduating from the MFA.
3. In your opinion, is it important to have a formal training in photography?
No. I think this is a rather subjective choice. It can be, and may work for some, and might be a waste for others. It depends on how different people function, their self-discipline, commitment, and circumstances. There are ways of learning that exist outside of the institutional structure. Before the formal education of photography, I assisted Fazal Sheikh, Robert Polidori, and Kenro Izu, who have distinct approaches towards their subjects and photography. Witnessing how they worked through complex circumstances has taught me what any formal education won’t necessarily offer. My MFA provided an intensely focused period, when I paused freelance work and devoted time to studying the medium alongside a group of people who were as keen about it. It was a thrustful beginning of that learning that, hopefully, continues through this life.
4. If you were to design a photo program for aspiring photographers in India, what would it look like? Would it be a degree course? Workshop format? Mentorships?
I’m responding to this without much experience in teaching in India, and relying on my experience and a few photographers and students I have had a chance to interact with. I think the most valuable education is where we learn a set of techniques and start to develop a language, and are able to think through the form. In the Indian context especially, I imagine a degree course that stresses on history of photography, critical thinking: how to read images from the South Asian context rather than a Eurocentric view, writing with a year-long mentorship towards a thesis project. For an earnest learning of the medium, I think one needs 3-4 years, and a workshop format alone may not be able to sustain it. But workshops within the degree program can be very useful to bring in practitioners who work in distinct styles.
5. Do you work in analog or digital or both?
Most times I use film cameras because I have that setup already. I also appreciate the lag in being able to see the images while they are developed and printed. It gives me some time to think about the images. Although this usually sets up expectations that are hard to match, and sometimes all hell breaks loose when I get my contact sheets. Imagination and reality don’t coexist on contact sheets! At least not for me.
6. 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 have worked with Photoshop for a very long time. And post shooting, digital technology was especially useful for my workflow, since I had a film camera. On principle, I don’t have reservations with digital technology, but I do work at a slow pace and haven’t, as yet, felt up to migrating to digital completely. Partly because I think any time away from the computer is valuable for me. I get tired of living a large part of my everyday staring at the screen.
Digital technology has certainly changed access to the camera and leveled the field economically and socially. This is a significant moment in bringing out the plural voices, therefore making photography multidimensional. I can no longer be a ‘photographer’ just by owning a camera. Thank goodness!
7. What typically draws you to work on a certain idea? Does it come as a gut feeling, or after analysis or research? Is it because of a memory, or something that you are really concerned about?
It is usually a combination of personal circumstances, chance, influence of books that I’m reading and people I’m spending time with. I was traveling in Mexico in pursuit of Pandurang Khankhoje’s work on endemic food plants, and exploring the relationship that indigenous communities have with land and food that falls outside of the consumerist imagination. It’s an enquiry that’s ongoing and stemmed out of living in rural upstate New York, surrounded by farms and mountains. It hasn’t yet taken form as an artwork. But it was as a traveler that the initial curiosity arose from reading the Banaras journals of Alice Boner, William Gedney, and Allen Ginsberg, who were travelers / outsiders. In hindsight, this was the beginning of both Letters to Alice, Bill and Allen and Body Is A Situation.
8. While working on projects, do they typically run in parallel or do you focus on one project at a time?
There are usually two or three ideas that I work on.
9. Who or what has inspired you to pursue photography and/or continues to do so?
I think there are two important considerations here – who and how. Artists such as Moyra Davey, Pradeep Dalal, and Dayanita Singh have had a deep impact on how I think about art, including photography. Feeling inspired, though, is constant work. Seeing exhibitions, listening to artist talks, reading, discussions, and teaching keep me alert.
10. Is there a book, an exhibition or a body of work that has really impressed you and maybe even influenced your work / life?
There are a number of books and works that hold a special place for me. Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization by Heinrich Zimmer, the prints of Louise Bourgeois and her writings. Lately, I have been looking more closely at representations of earth and the female body in prehistoric art and ancient Indian art.
11. Could you describe a time when you found yourself creatively ‘stuck?’ If yes, then how did you come around to dealing with it?
Yes, a number of times. In some instances, I have given myself small, playful art-making tasks, at other times I learnt a new form of yoga or took printmaking classes to learn a new medium. A common thread that runs through all these is doing something physical, whether it is exercise or working with an art form that is more physical and less mechanical.
12. How do you measure success or that a body of work is going well?
After reading about many artists who didn’t exhibit their work until very late in their lives or actually didn’t get the opportunity to show it at all with posthumous recognition and following, I feel that success of a work on those terms is a misleading criterion for evaluation. Louise Bourgeois was grateful to have worked in oblivion for a good 20-30 years of her artistic life. It enabled her to follow her instincts and listen to the people whose views mattered to her. All that time she would host weekly salons, had a community of artists and a robust exchange of ideas, so she was not living an insular life. But the market didn’t influence her. For me a work is effective when it generates a new set of questions and ideas for me and for the people viewing, especially the ones whose views are valuable for my process.
13. 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?
Initially, I was applying to various calls for awards and exhibitions, but now, with teaching and a baby, I focus more on working in the studio and meeting people interested in my work individually. I have artist friends who have a curatorial practice, as well, and it’s especially generative for me to be part of their exhibitions. The conversations are engaged and we pursue each other with vigor and frankness. I have had some residencies, like the Baxter Street Workspace residency, that culminated in an exhibition. It has been useful to have a deadline to put the work out into the world. Otherwise, I can go on working and re-working for a long time.
14. Do you feel that there are there adequate opportunities and avenues to share / show your work in India, or do you always look for such opportunities abroad?
Not at all. The most important spaces for developing a strong body of work and generating a feedback loop around it are non-commercial project spaces. We probably have 5 of those. The ratio of artist to these spaces is probably 1000:1 – if that. It’s very important for artists to live in the world and share their work unless their work / temperament requires a hermetic life. And it’s imperative for us to make that world and not spend a life in waiting. Our work does not conclude with the making. Unless artists (photographers) take exhibition, art reviews and publication of their work into their own hands, it will remain in the realm of white cube, commercial format, and remain limited by those conditions.
15. Do you think there is a universal language that photography uses? Are Indian photographers finding that they are judged by western criteria and standards?
Photography, particularly, deceives us into believing that it is a shared universal language, to some extent; but careful examination reveals that images don’t exist in a vacuum. They carry the maker’s subjectivity and lean on the viewers. So, any type of conditioning (including cultural) affects the photographic language. I think Indian photographers are judged by Euro-centric benchmarks, but more importantly Indians look at their own selves through that lens. This is where it is most damaging. Because then we are lost in a maze of someone else’s making and can never find our voices.
16. How would an interested collector go about buying your work?
They would approach the gallery, SepiaEYE, that represented some of my work in New York. Collectors have written to me directly or contacted me via the grant-making foundations or exhibition venues, as well.
17. If you didn’t do photography / art, what is the next best thing you would like to be doing?
I would probably study psychology and learn how to farm!
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Copyright © Nandita Raman
20 November
