Dayal captures life at the margins

A photograph tells a story. In fact, it can tell many. The story depends on the temperament of the subject and its context, whether it is a historical document or an image that was contrived or staged. With the barrage of images used for propaganda, manipulated or not, it is difficult to know the difference. Eager to learn more about journalistic photography and its many nuances, I sought out Delhi-based freelance photographer Sumit Dayal, whose images have been featured in magazines like TIME andNational Geographic. How authentic, I asked him, is the image to the story and how does it align with an artist's personal vision?

Sumit Dayal was born in Kashmir and brought up in Nepal, and has focused his work on South Asia and the cultural identities that these regions protract and eschew. Over coffee on an early Monday morning, we discussed his recent visit to New York and the progressive impact that social media has on the future of photography as a documentary medium. The popularity of the smartphone and applications that allow anyone to publish their photographs in three easy steps has made everyone an author. However the speed with which these are uploaded, and the multiplicity of sources, makes the idea of authorship redundant. Having said this, there is a credibility that, say, TIME has built over many years. But how does a magazine cope with the decreasing relevance of print? And how do we react to the changing interface? "Everyone simply adapts," he explains. 

As Dayal travels and camps all over the world, he excavates and documents the psyche of the land as he experiences it, without a prior agenda.

Dayal discovered his interest in photography quite by accident, after a chance apprenticeship with renowned photo-activist Thomas Kelly in Nepal. On his advice, Dayal went on to graduate with a degree in documentary and photo journalism at the International Center of Photography in New York in 2006. With a keen appetite for the thrills of photojournalism, he headed to one of the most dangerous and sensationalised regions of the time — Afghanistan, to cover the war's impact on local populations. The resulting series, titled "Afghanistan, No Strings Attached, 2007" is a compilation of everyday scenes that belie the precision of the camera, for they reflect a reality that is blurry, rough on the edges and often surreal. 

Dayal has since photographed the marginal and immigrant peoples of India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan. But it is his work on Kashmir, personal and ethnographically researched, that won him National Geographic's All Roads Photography Program in 2010. The continuing series, "On Going Home", sketches a personal timeline of observations along the Line of Control, all the way from Punjab to Ladakh. As he travels and camps, he excavates and documents the psyche of the land as he experiences it, without a prior agenda. He explains his inclination toward portraiture as a way to detract from the banality and blandness of the landscape, consequently accenting a specific emotion that is focused within the frame of the composition. Begun in 2009, Dayal's work in Kashmir is ongoing, and has the potential of remaining a historical record of our times.

As we come full circle to where our conversation began, Dayal informs me of his latest initiative called The India Photo Project, formed on the mobile photo-sharing platform Instagram. Fed by submissions from select Indian photographers, the collective aims to record the visual evolution of life and living in the world's largest democracy, wherein each image documents and relays strong voices in a manner that is both unbiased and free. As a new follower, I too am fed a daily dose of stunning and poignant images, along with many others, that still raise the question of how true the photograph is to the reality it attempts to capture.

How to process a history of violence

Delhi underwent a series of preparatory constructions and makeovers in the build-up to the Commonwealth Games in 2010. Although insufficient for the games themselves, it did affect civic life extensively. Over a conversation with Delhi-based artist Priyanka Choudhary, I learnt that the scramble to host the event was also symptomatic of a latent anxiety that propelled the city out of its lazy slumber. With a keenness to explore this pronounced overgrowth, she digressed from painting and spent the next year or so working at construction sites, actively participating in the making of "boundaries". As the city builds vertically, encumbering its supporting infrastructure, Choudhary paradoxically notices a similar anxiety in the barren lands of Rajasthan, the home of her maternal family. Here she observes small plots in the desert, marked by barbed wire fencing, appearing quite unnecessary and completely awkward. The landscape is but a reflection of who we are and to Choudhary the degree to which we build around us indicates the extent to which our freedom is limited. The shards of glass, cement or plaster walls, thorny shrubbery and so on, that we raise to secure ourselves ostensibly reflects, our insecurity.

But is it not necessary to protect, I ask, for we do not live in an ideal world. She agrees, but informs me of her intention to study more deeply the land we occupy and the ways in which it occupies our lives. We continue talking as we view some of her work; canvases punctured by nails, some ripped, others slashed, and a few more infested with thorny bush, dust or clay. These and others like the bamboo scaffolding installation titled Pubic (2010) or the red-coloured shards of glass sandwiched between two concrete walls titled Don't Make Me Yell (2012) are themselves an outgrowth of her observations and experiences at sites of construction. In 2012 began a rather accidental yet obvious progression into performative pieces with a work titled Shroud Reader. Choudhary had already begun to physically place herself in situations she desired to investigate. Here, she lies on one of the two beds placed under a loosely draped sheet pierced with nails, with an open invitation to anyone from the audience to lie beside her. She claims it was not a premeditated intention but as the piece took shape, composed by the architecture of the small room of the gallery she felt the need to place herself within it, accenting its fragility and emphasising its temporality. She describes her vulnerability in the presence of watchful eyes of strangers while staring up at hundreds of nails restrained by the simple weave of thread. The resilience of being is never so dramatically real and the experience prompted a series of performances in spaces of historical unrest. Through 2013, she participated in a series of residencies and projects that took her from Zokalo in Mexico, Ground Zero in New York, Soweto in Johannesburg, Jallianwala Bagh in Punjab, and Ypres in Belgium. Each of these sites has endured a history of violence and injustice that shows no residual presence today. Disturbed by how easily the past is forgotten and relegated to history, Choudhary decided to explore the latent violence of the space by inhabiting it and engaging with the local people.

Her sole companion is the charkha (spinning wheel). As she sits spinning amidst the bustle of a square or side street, the constant act of spinning thread arrests her attention; admittedly a sort of meditative action. As the thread grows longer, she begins to wind it around her face and body, metaphorically binding herself to the site. As she spins, more people take interest, inquire and some even begin to narrate stories. The theatricality of her work is attractive to say the least, if not borderline shocking. Using the newly woven and wound thread as a clean canvas, she urges people to write, to express their acceptance and their resilience of the past in scribbles of "yes". It is difficult to describe an experience, or a specific underlying desire that drives it, she finally confesses.

Choudhary declines the label of performance artist although she feels strongly about the medium that connects her to places and people through the simple thread of thought and energy. She is also reticent to consider her work in the lineage of Arte Povera artists although she admits aesthetic and theoretical resemblance. She finds her inspiration in everyday observations and draws from those that move her the most. As I wind up to leave, I look around her home where we both have been chatting, sipping on our iced teas and ask her about the many figurative sketches adorning her walls. They are a part of her; of course they are, but not simply in the manner of a thought put on paper. They are a window to knowing her, an expression and materialisation of self in a specific time wherein like all her works, life and art seamlessly flow into one another.



Source: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/artbeat/how...

An 'open source' history through art

Astha Butail began her career in fashion, but her recent interest and pursuit of the study of Indian scriptures, especially the Rig Veda, inspired a deeper yearning. I stumbled upon her work while researching book projects for an editorial I was writing and was immediately drawn to the poetics of her art. This specific project was titled A Story Within A Story, an open book series she began in 2012. Butail draws from the manner in which oral traditions are passed on through generations, interwoven and overlapped, interpreted anew each time. The first themed collection is an archive of a hundred catalogued books based on the Black Sun, drawn from the mythological tale of Martand.

Her studio is also her home, where life and work merge, multi-layered and fascinating, much like her art. As I walk in, I immediately recognise the books mounted on the wall. She walks me through some early works; delicate paper collages and wooden macquettes of a havankund, while filling me in on her motivations behind them all. We shortly return to the books and she explains how she conceived and executed the project. She is thorough in her application of symbolic references to Martand, the eighth son of the goddess Aditi. She crafts each book by hand, with seven leaves. These are then filled by contributions from the audience who are invited to write, draw, engage, reacting to a note on a prompt card that becomes the title of the book marked systematically as 1/100, 2/100 and so on. The outcome is a beautiful collection of people's experiences, stories, poems and sketches that interact with each other. She deftly controls the overall aesthetic of the books, each encased in a sleek retro-looking wooden cover, with pages of paper selected in white, black, red or grey, bound by thread and mountable at random on the wall as an installation. 

Butail’s fascination with memory and the varied libraries of its keeping is complemented by her eye for symmetry that guides the construction of her works. No two books are made the same; the pages cut as eyelets, squares and other geometric shapes, with a black page peeping from under the white that is overlaid.  

Butail's fascination with memory and the varied libraries of its keeping is complemented by her eye for symmetry that guides the construction of her works. No two books are made the same; the pages cut as eyelets, squares and other geometric shapes, with a black page peeping from under the white that is overlaid. Similarly, no two stories are the same, although they may draw from the same reference or source text.

A set of stools placed in ascending or descending order, depending on the way you view them, is currently part of a group exhibition at Galleryske, Delhi. As intended in most of her works, this piece too, invites viewers to participate, choosing to sit however they please, similar to a play of musical chairs. Although originally built more as furniture than a work of art, the creative instinct remains the same. This is the first time she has displayed her work at a gallery space, the open book series remaining within the safe environs of art establishments like the Devi Art Foundation, Delhi and Masquelibros (Artist's Book Fair), Madrid. These are, for the most part, visited by an exclusive art fraternity of enthusiasts and museum-goers, whose inputs are in tune with the project's overall purpose and design. She wants Black Sun (2012), the 10-part Stretch Out To The Light (2013) and others that follow, to be archived as repositories; relics of the current age and its prevalent thoughts. This, however ambitious, does ensure collective authorship whereby individual contributions document multiple personal identities, memories and thoughts minus the politics of history writing. In a place and time where we find ourselves surrounded by competitive branding of ideas, it is inspiring to view her working process, from the inception of a thought to its ultimate manifestation. Astha Butail thus takes up an important role as artist-activist, successfully performing and activating a derived reference with new connotations.

(A Story Within A Story blog can be found at http://astorywithinastory.tumblr.com/about)