INDIA'S PORTRAIT STUDIO PHOTOGRAPHERS
Until the widespread use of iPhones and digital cameras, the humble Indian portrait studio photographer was an integral part of every community across the subcontinent.
At the dawn of that technical transition in the early 2000s, in an effort to record this creative element of Indian life, I hunted down photographers who were still using hand-painted scenic studio backdrops in their studios. No two backdrops being exactly the same, in a tradition that dates back to the 19th century, when photography and its European styling was introduced to the subcontinent via the British Raj, these atmospheric cloth backdrops developed their own Indian vernacular.
In recent decades, regrettably, the hand-painted backdrops are an element of Indian culture that has been swept to the side by the ever-pervasive influence of globalization, together with the aforementioned arrival of digital photography: they’ve lost their appeal in contemporary India. Though part of a not-too-distant contemporary India, sadly, studio photographers and their hand-painted backdrops are now lost to the machinations of modernity.
Paying homage to the portraitists, and in an effort to capture the last of a tradition, I photographed some of the few remaining photographers using
these studio backdrops in northern India, letting them pose in idiosyncratic Indian style.
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