Dayanita Singh: Empty Spaces
As a photographer Dayanita Singh has often chosen to depict people and places which are somehow off-limits to the outsider but which she knows personally and feels a particular connection with.
Her recent exhibition at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham showed the interior world of the Anandamayi Ashram, India’s only ashram for girls on the banks of the Ganges in Benares. In October Scalo Verlag will publish Myself, Mona Ahmed which is the result of a 12 year collaboration between Singh and Mona, a eunuch from old Delhi.
Singh is perhaps best known for her portraits of India’s urban middle and upper class families, these images of people working partying or resting at home, show Indian life without embellishment, she explores another side of India; the place that she belongs to and understands.
Singh sees the work in this exhibition also as a form of portraiture, of places rather than people, but just as expressive and individual, the images retain the same sense of warmth and connectivity as her previous work. The black and white photographs were taken in a diverse range of interior spaces from the ballroom of an18th Century palace to the humbler surroundings of a private home, from museums, libraries and seminaries, to the specially constructed wedding ‘stages’ for traditional marriage ceremonies. All are places that have, through time and association, developed a very distinctive character.
An abiding image of India is that of a teeming crowd of humanity, however all but a few of Singh’s images are devoid of the human figure, they are typified by composure rather than restlessness. The work’s subtle formality is the product of intense and intimate observation, communicating a unique sense of time and place.
