"An employee manning the front desk explained that it was the only place in the area for customers to have photos taken for their Aadhaar cards, biometric I.D.s issued to almost all of India's adult population. Sometimes, the employee mentioned, people came for portraits to mark special occasions or holidays. Sheth's interest was piqued. "Are you expecting people today?" she asked."
"Jagdish became the first of more than sixty-five studios across the country that Sheth would photograph over the next three years. The resulting series, "Photo Studio," later published by Photoink as a book of the same name, was a departure from the black-and-white, analog documentary style that she'd employed on previous projects, including images of the streets of Mumbai as well as visual ethnographies of twins and of the Siddis, an Afro-Indian ethnic group."
Ketaki Sheth discovered Jagdish Photo Studio in Manori while photographing with a Leica M9 and then set out to document more than sixty-five such studios across India over three years. She shifted from black-and-white, analog methods to color to match the studios' portrait workshops and the vividness of their interiors. The portraits record a fading commercial model: studios served for Aadhaar cards and occasional formal portraits but faced closure due to smartphone cameras, road widening and developer pressure, and a lack of interest among proprietors' children in continuing the businesses.
Read at The New Yorker
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]