The book is well known as Dayanita Singh’s primary medium – one she explores to create new relationships between photography, publishing, the exhibition, and the museum. But where did her passion begin for the book as the ideal vessel for her photos and for the stories she tells? The answer lies in Zakir Hussain, a handmade maquette crafted by Singh in 1986 as her first project as a graphic design student. The protagonist of Singh’s photo essay is the Indian classical tabla virtuoso, Zakir Hussain, whom she captured onstage and at home. Surrounding the photos are handwritten texts gleaned from interviews Singh made with her sitters, including insights from Hussain: “I will always be a musician. A musician will always be a musician, not just me. He may stop performing but the musician is still there.”
This Steidl facsimile edition is scanned from Singh’s original maquette and reproduces all its “imperfections” and idiosyncrasies, including her penciled notes about the book’s construction – foreshadowing the influential bookmaker to come. Shanay Jhaveri’s accompanying essay discusses how Singh came to “make” the original, referring to her student notes and exploring how she intuitively assembled the book, from editing the images to design, setting the ground for the book objects and photo architectures of her later practice. The published maquette comes between two soft covers, with poster, sleeve, 96 pages, 94 images, and measuring 21.7 x 23.2 cm.
Publishing is also a significant part of the Dayanita Singh’s practice: in her books she experiments with alternate forms of producing and viewing photographs. Here, Singh’s latest is the “book-object,” a work that is concurrently a book, an art object, an exhibition and a catalog. Learn more about Singh and her artistic practice on her website.
Sourced / excerpted from this artist’s website. (2022)
by Dayanita Singh
Steidl, Göttingen, 2019
ISBN: 978 3 95829 623 7
20 November
