IN THE PEOPLE’S STUDIO
NEW EXHIBITION GIVES THE FADING PHOTO STUDIO NEW LIFE
What happens when photo studios— spaces that allowed easy travel to faraway lands— fade into obsolescence? Do they still carry the light of the past into the present? These seem to be some of the central questions that veteran photographer Ketaki Sheth’s new exhibition Photo Studio (on display at Mumbai’s Chemould Prescott Road till October 20) grapples with.
The genesis of this ambitious exhibition, Sheth tells us, started in 2014 when she discovered Jagdish Photo Studio in Manori, some 60 km north of Mumbai. The village has been Sheth’s home for decades now—her father had built a house there before she was born. “I started photographing people in the village who were both familiar and new, and got particularly good pictures on festive occasions. I felt confident that I would find similar studios across the country and set off on the long journey across eight states over three years,” she says.
Sheth eventually found 65 such studios across India. More than spaces that used digital backdrops of European monuments, Sheth found herself interested in barely surviving studios that kept the backdrops raw and hand-painted. Shot with lights already available in the studio, most of Sheth’s images have a grainy, crackling beauty. “I wanted to keep things as natural and as close to the studio atmosphere as possible,” she says. “[The images] do signal a passage of time, but I had to find those 65 studios before I knew for certain.”
Clarifying that her project was never one of documenting studios, Sheth adds, “As a photographer, you choose the best pictures. I was setting
out to create images that were unique of people that were special against often painterly backdrops and subdued lighting. I never carried a flash or a tripod or lights. I just used what I found. “The gaze and the aesthetics took shape during the process. Sheth had no prior boxes to tick— she was going wherever these stories took her. “When shooting, you never really say, ‘Oh I need to balance this with that or focus on this,’ as it all happens quite intuitively at the time of taking pictures.”
Sheth’s images can take many meanings. In one of the pictures, a schoolgirl poses with her legs stretched, grinning with glee. In another, a middle-aged man poses nonchalantly with his lips pursed. Mumbai, for its part, also finds newer languages to express itself through the photographer’s lenses. “It is a city I belong to and engage with regardless of its jams and digging and bursting population,” says Sheth. “It teems with energy like nowhere else in the country and people just get on. I would like to do a future project in the city and I already have some ideas. I usually engage with one thing and dig deeper, so let’s see where this takes me.” ■