A man smokes a beedi in a tea shop and looks doubtfully at the camera; a flower seller squats on the ground against his cycle while a woman carrying a pot, turns back with mild surprise.
Waswo X. Waswo’s subjects may be ordinary, but not his work. His photographs of the common man are juxtaposed against surreal hand-painted paintings bursting with colour, crafted by Rajesh Soni, an Udaipur-based artist and his long-time collaborator. Excerpts from an interview:
Why do you draw comparison to the process of your work to theatre?
I actually shoot quite primitively in a simple tin-roof structure that I often call my “cow shed”. We only use natural light, so visitors to the studio are sometimes really surprised at how basic it is. I call our process “theatrical” because we employ many of the same techniques as staged dramas. There is painted scenery, our backdrops, that are similar to what you might find in a theatre production. The people we shoot, though all of them are common people that we encounter on the street, actually become actors in our little plays. They are asked to perform the role of themselves, which is not always easy for them. We’ve developed a lot of methods to help them feel comfortable and be themselves in front of the camera. In the end we make photographs that hover between what is real and what is fantasy.
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Tell us what drew you to hand-painting and the reason for merging it with black-and-white?
I was part of a small movement in the 1990s that was referred to as the “Antiquarian Avant-garde”. These were photographers who reacted to the advent of digital photography by going in the other direction, seeking to retrieve vintage photographic processes and do new and exciting things with them. Thus, my early work with what is now considered the nostalgic brown tones of sepia. But I gave up sepia photography over twelve years ago. I wanted to explore something more contemporary, and yet retain some connection to the vintage feel of my earlier work. Hand-painted black and white photographs became the answer for me. Working with Rajesh Soni, we developed a new kind of vintage feel, something I don’t think anyone had done before.
People dressed as deities, a photographer clicking a picture of his wife, boys on bikes... Why does the mundane fascinate you so much?
Ha! Well, what is mundane might be in the eye of the beholder. Even though I’ve had a connection to India since 1993, and have lived here now for over sixteen years, I think perhaps my foreign background still allows me to see things with a fresh eye. What people think of as mundane can actually be so beautiful if looked at in the right way. Turning the mundane into the magical is the best of tricks.
In one interview, you call yourself an Indian, instead of an American artist. What makes you feel at home here?
I find myself in a bit of a no man’s land when it comes to my nationality. Of course I was born in America and still hold an American passport. But India definitely feels like home. When I need to return to the US, which is only rarely, I really am a stranger in a strange land. Udaipur is much more comfortable, and filled with friends. Flying back to Udaipur always feels like flying home. My art has been all about my relationship with India for over sixteen years. So I like to think of myself as an Indian artist, hoping that my race and actual nationality will not be the only thing people judge my art by. To some extent I’ve been successful, and I feel quite welcome in the Indian art scene. But there are always those who hold their distance. You can’t win over everyone, no matter how hard you try.
How important is Udaipur to you in re-discovering and re-defining your art?
I have kept my home and studio in Udaipur since 2006. The town (it is actually a city but always feels more like a town), has been nearly the entire locus of my work for ten years. I never wanted to be seen as a travel photographer. I wanted to become a part of the ambiance of a place, a part of its people and zeitgeist. Udaipur has allowed me to do that. Udaipur is now part of my life story, and maybe I am a part of the story of Udaipur.
You make it clear these are not ethnographic representations, but staged fantasies. Where do the two confluence and diverge?
Ethnographic photography is a real trap. We all have seen the horrible photos made by colonial empires of subjected people forced to stand frozen and unhappy in front of the huge cameras of the past. If you strip away the colonial histories of some of these photographs they can sometimes be quite appealing on a purely aesthetic level, but to try to imitate that holds an enormous danger of simply replicating the subject/master power relationship. I’ve tried to steer clear of this problem by creating an ethical practice that treats the people who model as equals and sometimes even as stars. There is a lot of back and forth in the studio while we make a photograph. People often suggest their own poses. There is role play and sometimes a bit of silliness. Before clicking the shutter I look for the light of inner personality to relax their being and sparkle in their eyes. So what we do is much more akin to making a portrait than an ethnographic photograph, though I admit that the aesthetics of ethnography have had some influence.
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What about the common man attracts you?
I myself come from a lower middle class family in the heart of America’s Midwest. My father was a grocer and my mother hailed from a rural farm. My first jobs were menial: I worked in an industrial printing plant throughout my twenties. I know what it means to get my hands dirty, work up a sweat, and be tremendously thirsty for an iced cold beer after a grueling day’s work. So I really relate to the working class, the tradesmen, and the farmers. As I grew up I saw my father forced out of business by the rising competition of the large corporate-owned grocery chains. I remember that deeply. When I see simple people and families trying to survive with a family business or trade, it brings back a lot of memories for me. To this day I’m more comfortable around the common man than among the upper echelons of society, though of course, thankfully, our work now has some fabulously wealthy collectors.
Walk us through the process of your work. When we see your works, we can sense a subtle under-current of pathos. And, why black-and-white?
Pathos is a part of it. Some of our photos are downright comical and some quite lighthearted. Some are spiritual. But when a person views the series as a whole there is certainly some pathos that emerges, a kind of sadness at the human condition. But not pity. Never pity. The people we photograph would abhor pity. The series encompasses many aspects of life, and many emotions.
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Rajesh Soni is your longtime collaborator and adds to your works, a very surreal touch. How did you meet him and what is your work chemistry?
I’ve known Rajesh for many years, and we have been working together as a team now for over ten years. Rajesh is a third generation Rajasthani hand-colourist. His grandfather was court photographer to the Maharana Bopal Singh of Mewar, and it was the skill of his grandfather in painting photographs that was passed down to Rajesh. What many people fail to realize is that each of the photographs that we create has been personally painted by Rajesh. He meticulously and masterfully brushes all of the colours on what begins as a black and white photo. We are best of friends, but also business partners. I can’t say that we don’t have the occasional fight, but this is only natural. We’re like members of a rock band creating music. It is a complex process to negotiate our own egos sometimes.
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“The voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes, but in finding new eyes.” Your website carries this quote by Marcel Proust. How much of this vision has seeped into your approach to art?
I love this quote from Proust. I use it as a signature on all of my emails. It is a daily reminder of what I was taught in photography school so many years ago: that the real art lies not in the camera nor the equipment; the darkroom nor the method. The real art lies in how you view the world, and how you translate that vision into something that can be shared.
The photographer’s signature studio portraits will be on show at The Folly, Amethyst, Roypettah from October 13 to 19, from 11 am to 7.30 pm at the Photowalla show presented by Tasveer.
