Ketaki Sheth’s photographs of small-town photo studios have layers of meaning

Ketaki Sheth has documented the small-town studio photographer with nostalgia and a touch of voyeurism

October 06, 2018 04:00 pm | Updated 06:32 pm IST

Nice Digital Studio, Hyderabad

Nice Digital Studio, Hyderabad

At Jagdish Photo Studio in Manori, a fishing village not far from Mumbai, photographer Ketaki Sheth was struck by a vision — of a “blue plastic stool against a sheer red curtain”. The splash of colours inspired her to start her new photo series, titled ‘Photo Studio’, which is now showing at Photoink gallery in New Delhi. The colours she invokes are surprising for an artist previously known for her black-and-white photographs.

This exhibition not only marks what the press release calls Sheth’s “extraordinary transition to colour and digital photography”, but is also her first experiment with still life, a genre she has not explored previously. One of the important strands here is her empathy for studio photographers from small-town India; in addition, all the shots are tinged with a restrained nostalgia.

Contradictory impulses

From 2015 to 2018, Sheth visited 65 photo studios across India, most of which were already in decline. They nevertheless testify

Phototec Studio, Calicut, Kerala

Phototec Studio, Calicut, Kerala

to their clients’ persistent desire to combine a faithful representation of themselves while exploring the fancifulness associated with the studio portrait. As V. Geetha, one of the authors of The Artisan Camera, says, the “small studio photograph [remains] an important and valued repository of mutually contradictory impulses of memory, fantasy and truth telling”.

The fantasy tools are afforded by the props, the hairdos and the outfits. There is a noteworthy image of a tie and suit on a hanger in ‘Photo Studio’. The men’s suit, an ubiquitous prop, is visibly worn out, carrying the memory of the multiple bodies that have used it as a quick fix for a pose. It is significantly placed where a person would stand for a photo portrait. Sheth describes how she felt it deserved a portrait of its own, thereby hinting at one of the key aspects of this body of work: a series of still lifes approached as portraits and vice versa.

Painted backgrounds play a crucial role in the creation of the fictionalised world of the studio, a role

Prince Studio, Bhavnagar, Gujarat

Prince Studio, Bhavnagar, Gujarat

highlighted both in the design of the exhibition at Photoink and in the publication that accompanies the show — incidentally, not just an exhibition catalogue but also a photobook in itself. The Kashmir-style landscapes, the skylines dotted with high-rises and tropical beaches constitute what Christopher Pinney calls in his introductory essay a “stereotypical repertoire,” which reflects the importance of the studio photographer also as an enabler of wanderlust.

That decayed crease

Sheth accessed the semi-private space of the studio not as a client but as a documenter of the workings of the small-town photographer: her empathy is not devoid of a certain degree of voyeurism. Browsing through the book, I realised how an interesting authorial intersection has taken place here: Sheth superimposes her own authorial voice, which she affirms in different ways, on the the mood set by the studio-owner: in the portraits, for instance, there can be no doubt that the posers are responding to her gaze. Sheth asserts her vision in the framing as well: her widely-framed images show aspects of the studio well beyond the stage. It is here, in this often cluttered and colour-intensive “bleed area,” in this excess of the margins, that the photographer’s predilections emerge: “It was my job to capture... that decayed crease in a curtain,” she says.

There is space for the photographer’s self-doubt too. The photo of an adolescent sitting on a couch and bending forward so as to hide her face, to which both the book and the exhibition assign special importance, is an image of resistance to being photographed. Its inclusion is a questioning of Sheth’s entitlement.

As South-African writer Sean O’Toole described in the essay ‘Moving between land and subject’, “The man is refusing the photographer — and by implication the photographer’s interested and questioning ally, us... Implicit in the man’s pose, as well as [the photographer]’s decision to place his photograph upfront, is a concession: see me, but on my terms.”

One image has a somewhat decayed cut-out of Mahatma Gandhi taking centre stage. I am not sure I can discern what a friend insinuated — that the deteriorating prop stands for the erosion of the icon. More than the political reading, what interests me is the hybridity in this photograph, which operates at two different levels.

On the one hand, the image has a startling three-dimensionality to it, which is surprising if we take into account that it has been twice flattened: first by transferring the real Gandhi onto a photograph, which is then transformed into a tri-dimensional cutout, a photo-sculpture, and flattened again by Sheth. Secondly, and here we go back to the suit discussed earlier, one is attracted to its ambiguity: are we witnessing a portrait of a still life or the still life of a portrait? Gandhiji seems to be present in both cases, and made an accomplice in this subversion of genres.

What if we thought of ‘Photo Studio’ , including its peopled portraits, as a collection of spirited still lifes? Considered in this vein, props such as, say, the green velvet loveseat, become as alive as any sitter.

ON SHOW: ‘Photo Studio’, Photoink, New Delhi, till October 13.

The writer is the founding director of GoaPhoto and JaipurPhoto, and the author of essays on photography.

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