1. What is your earliest memory of how or what attracted you to photography?
My earliest memory is that even at the age of 4, I loved flipping through and reorganizing our family photo albums.
2. Why do you work on analog?
Analog is what excites me.
3. Digital technology has changed photography drastically over the last few years. Do you work with the digital at all? Do you believe the changes have been good for the medium or not?
I do not work with digital cameras at all. I prefer the meditative, slow process of a manual camera that uses film. In fact, I am now using a large format studio camera for my current project. It’s a mindset.
The digital medium has its own realm. It provokes creativity with ease and is in sync with the modern need for speed and instant gratification, possibly. It’s neither good nor bad. Just different.
4. Why do you choose to work mainly in B/W?
Black and white is an art form that does not project reality the way we see it with the human eye. I believe it allows me to interpret and transform reality in my own fashion.
5. What usually draws 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 is it something that you are really concerned about?
It’s when I feel passionate about a subject and I want to talk about it and express myself through photographs. In a sense my photographs define me. Finally, a body of work encompasses all these factors – gut, concern, depth of feeling, and yet it transcends them.
6. Do you think it is important to receive a formal training in photography?
Yes I do.
7. If you were to design a photography program for young Indian photographers, what would it look like? Would it be a degree course? Workshop format? Mentorships?
I think a degree course followed by a mentorship is a good idea. It’s possibly the incubation period for an artist to come into their own.
8. You studied photography at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication and, about 20 years later, having run an export house, you went back to a photo school for evening classes. How has this education informed your practice?
After such a long break, going back to photo school honed my interest in the medium. I had the opportunity to work in the lab to process and print the black-and-white photographs that I had taken as part of projects set by the school.
I think this sensitized me to the freedom I had of printing a photograph with my personal artistic view of what I had photographed.
9. What brought you back to photography after being away from it for 20 years?
I just deeply hankered to explore and develop that part of my creativity.
10. Who or what has inspired you to pursue photography and/or continues to do so?
The freedom of expressing myself through transfixing a moment in time on a piece of negative always excites me! I feel that moment is an act of exploration that defines me and perhaps the artist within me. Creating and informing memory through personal perceptions of reality, photography offers me a powerful interpretative language. It’s as if my energy is transposed and united with that moment in space and time. It’s my poem; my being is in rhythm with the environment when I press the shutter.
11. Is there a book, an exhibition or a body of work that has really impressed you and maybe even influenced your work and/or life?
I cannot say that there is one specific body of work that impressed and influenced me. Many photography greats resonated at different points of time. However, in India my friend and photographer, Dayanita Singh inspired me to pick up the Hasselblad and follow my heart.
12. While working on projects, do they typically run in parallel or do you focus on one project at a time?
I prefer to focus on one project at a time. Though I have interjected a long-term project with a shorter project I have been commissioned for.
13. Could you describe a time when you found yourself creatively ‘stuck?’ If yes, then how did you come around to dealing with it?
Yes, I felt creatively stuck when I started working on my Tibetan exiles story. It was right after my Bhutan work, which I had completed after an intense period of 5 years. Somehow I couldn’t find a new photographic language that spelled what it felt like to be displaced as a community in exile. My initial work with the Tibetan community in India did not express my feelings about the subject of displacement. I felt stymied and dropped the project for a brief period. It’s as if I needed to let it breathe, to find my feelings on the subject. Then one day I felt inspired to visit Majnu Ka Tilla in Delhi, an old refugee colony haunt from my days as a student at Delhi University.
I spent a day and a late night at the colony and I just knew that I had found my space to express myself. It was an intuitive sense of resonating with my environment. This had to happen for my ideas to flow and express themselves creatively.
14. When you put together a series of images, please share your process while you are creating the narrative of the story?
When I work on a project, I like to read literary works extensively. I also journal and jot down my thoughts and ideas on the project. This seems to be my process while I create the narrative of a story I’m working on.
15. What prompts you to use the ‘diary narrative’ in your projects? You have used this in at least two of your projects – working at Majnu ka Tilla and while working with the survivors of the partition.
It’s precious to have the voice of the person I have photographed, recorded for posterity in their own words and hand. The diary becomes a live object as it zooms in on the real person, unwittingly dragged into the whole human situation of war and suffering.
16. How do you measure success or that a body of work is going well?
First my own sense of it! Then I appreciate inputs from my gallerists, perhaps.
17. How much effort do you put into getting your work shown? Is this important to you? Does showing your work feed your creative process or does it distract from it?
I think I do not put enough effort into getting my work shown. I feel it is important to show ones work widely. It benefits the artist and the viewer, expanding the experience of both. Once the creative process is over, it’s interesting to get a critique on one’s work. It’s like sharing what’s in your heart with both friends and strangers, perhaps making strangers into friends. Showing my work is an affirmation of my conviction. Though, in reality, showing a completed body of work does distract me or pull me away from focusing on a current project I may be working on.
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 think one needs to show both within the country and abroad. It is probably important that the galleries that represent the artist are strong and proactive in showing the work of not-so-well-known artists. The opportunity to show within our country is quite limited.
19. Do you think there is a universal language that photography uses? Are Indian photographers finding that they are judged by western criteria and standards?
Yes, I think all art uses a universal language. I don’t think art has such delineated criteria and standards, as such. It’s more a question of expressing yourself with great individuality and originality. That always stands out anywhere in the world. Criteria limits artistic expression and excellence.
20. How would an interested collector go about buying your work?
Through my representative gallery SepiaEYE (www.sepiaeye.com) or by directly contacting me on my personal website.
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?
Don’t be afraid to be you.
22. If you didn’t do photography, what is the next best thing you would like to be doing?
Write novels. Historical novels perhaps.
Copyright © 2021, PhotoSouthAsia. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © Serena Chopra
20 November
