For those who think photo books is just a cooler way to say albums of personal photographs, photo books can also be an ‘art object’ - photographer Dayanita Singh's books and book objects are a great example.
According to Tate Modern (UK), a photo book is ‘a book of photographs by a photographer that has an overarching theme or follows a storyline – a convenient and reasonably cheap way of disseminating the work of a photographer to a mass audience’.
Most contemporary photographers have toggled with photo books as a way to view their works. Anshika Varma, photographer and founder of Offset Projects, calls a photo book a “very important medium of authorship” for a photographer.
Over the years, Varma has been building a travelling library of photo books from South Asian photographers (Nepal, Pakistan and India), Offset Pitara (box), which she takes to different spaces so that people can browse through the collection. From schoolchildren, art fair audiences to rickshaw pullers, the responses have been “fantastic”, she said.
“It isn’t feasible that only writers read books. In the same way, the travelling library will give audiences both within and outside the photography field a chance to access and understand the language of photography,” she said.
Why specifically South Asian photographers? Because of the constant looking at the works of Western photographers, and the paucity of resources when it comes to works of photographers from South Asia.
Why has the photo book remained relevant in digital times? Practitioners of images – photographers, academicians, historians, artists – all engage with photographs in different ways.
Gitartha Goswami, an Assamese photographer, said he would use the photo book form if the work demands it. “A photobook is more intimate, tactual, and the way of looking is different than on screen,” he said. “So, I might be inclined to bring a work out as a photobook to give the viewer a more personal experience.”
In a book, the scale can be played with. Varma gives an example. “Imagine looking at a book as big as your dining table or as small as the palm of your hand? The experience will be different.”
Dayanita Singh’s famous ‘Pothi Box’ is a wooden structure which has 30 images of paper archives, a film archive and a printing press. One can take the image cards out and put another in front. This makes the whole concept of photo book dynamic rather than a fixed or unchaging work to be placed on a shelf.
Varma, who has now moved to publication, has relooked at the concept of the photo book with Guftgu, Offset's upcoming debut photo book. “This will be the first time that a photo book will be multilingual and deconstructed,” she said. “The book will have the works of 10 contemporary South Asian photographers in individual sections," Varma added. “The whole idea of a deconstructed book is to show the images exactly how they were meant to be; like an accordion, as inserts, or as a poster even.”
Photographers say that self-publishing has made it possible for photo books to stand their ground. “Besides, today there is a need to engage with the process,” Varma said. “Why are you making what you are making – these questions can be best explained in a book.”
Clearly, the intention of the work will decide the dissemination of the work. When photographer Gauri Gill did the series 1984 on the anti-Sikh riots in Punjab, she decided to make e-books so that they could reach as many people as possible. Sometimes, photographers give away free e-books for the same reason. Some may make Xerox copy books to be given away for free whereas some make it elaborately interactive ones, as Dayanita Singh did with her ‘museums’, which are essentially giant wooden bookcases with framed images that can be taken out, looked at and rearranged.
“A photo book can be with or without text, or even a book without pictures, just text art,” Varma said. “In Guftgu, one of the photographers, Cheryl Mukherjee, has merged text with her mother’s archival images, and together it becomes is a work of art.”
Be it a work of art or an object of art – photo books are ideal vehicles for images to take on new lives. “One can spend more time and discover nuances of the book over time,” Goswami said. He points to how our perception of the book changes in time. “The book form also has elements like the cover, pages, printing and binding techniques, sequence, text, all of which are factors that can bring much more to the experience of the audience than just the images.”
The reading room of the Pitara is being hosted by Bangalore International Center and Toto Funds at Arts from June 17-24, 2022.
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