Studio takes
Ketaki Sheth’s Photo Studio is as much about studio photography in the age of selfies as it is an album of contemporary life and its attachments.
KETAKI SHETH HAS BEEN A PHOTOGRAPHER FOR FOUR decades and she used only black-and-white film until 2014. Photo Studio (Photoink, 2018) marks the veteran’s extraordinary transition to colour using the digital medium.
The Mumbai-based Sheth’s work is part of major museum and private collections across the world. Among her other well-known publications are Twinspotting: Photographs of Patel Twins in Britain & India (Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2000); and Bombay Mix: Street Photographs (Dewi Lewis Publishing and Sepia International, 2007).
Sheth’s solo exhibitions include “On Belonging: Photographs of Indians of African Descent” at the National Portrait Gallery, London (2015); “A Certain Grace: The Sidi, Africans of Indian Descent” at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi (2013); and “Bombay Mix” at Emile Zola Gallery and at Fête du Livre, Aix-en-provence (2008).
Between 2015 and 2018, Sheth, now 65, travelled across India and visited over 65 photo studios, many of which were in a shabby state of decline. While photo studios in India have been explored and written about extensively, Sheth’s approach to studios has been anything but conventional. She often ignores strict conventions of making formal portraits of people with inscrutable expressions. Instead, she uses ageing studio lights when available, a handheld camera, and a 35mm lens to exhume tales of past glory and draw one’s attention to objects and a cast of characters that surrender gracefully to her gaze.
Photo Studio is as much a story about photography in the age of selfies as it is about contemporary life and attachments. Over the years, Sheth has