FEATURE: Dayanita's Goa album When Dayanita Singh tires of New Delhi or New York or London for that matter, she retreats to Goa. She owns an old Portuguese house in Saligao, which is her haven from her zooming life as a professional photographer.
And she need it, too. In the last decade or so, this pupil of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, and International Centre of Photography, New York, has emerged as a much-celebrated Indian presence on the international photography scene. Her numerous group exhibitions apart, her solo showings have been at the Venice Biennale 1999; the Scalo Galerie, Zurich 2002; the Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin 2003; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; and the Frith Street Gallery, London 2005. And then there are her books, four till date: Zakir Hussain, New Delhi 1986; Myself Mona Ahmed, Scalo Verlag, Zurich-New York 2001; Privacy, Steidl, Germany, 2003; and Chairs, Steidl, Germany, 2005. Dayanita is constantly working and is on the move from one project to another. But it is to Goa that she always returns. To heal and realise. To mix and mingle. She has a few local friends, mostly her neighbours in the village, with whom she spins a web around herself as if to distance herself from her other journeys. Journeys, by the way, is the title of her next book project: a series of seven minature-format photo-poems on Allahabad, Benaras, Kolkata, Coimbatore, Chennai, Devigarh and Thiruvananthapuram. No, Goa does not feature in these. It is more than a journey. It is, in her case, a recurrent destination. Dayanita's Goa pictures, unlike her more seen and written- about projects, like Families or Mona Ahmed, are the least discussed or exhibited. In this album, she ignores the stereotypical beach-front Goa of the tourists to delve into the inner recesses of the quaint Goan Catholic community that she finds in and around her Saligao retreat. Her frames are somewhat like the intimate confidences that one would share with a stranger. A person not bound by blood-ties, but by a wilfully chosen sharing of space, time and empathy. What marks these pictures is the pride and pathos of Goa's fast-fading Indo-Portuguese culture, which Dayanita is able to evoke so nimbly through apparently prosaic situations; the picture of Mrs Braganza in her polka-dot dress against a wall decorated with flowers and wall-plates; the large, mirrored, empty ballroom of the Braganza house; a roadside Jesus wrapped up in marigolds, a white lonely church shot in a gloomy grey light, some favourite pieces of china crockery and a revered father's photograph exhibited along with Dayanita's own works, artist Mario Miranda's private chapel.... There is something achingly charming about each of these images. Using her favourite Hasselblad camera, Dayanita composes her square frames with both live and inanimate subjects. The tight, contained format and the black-and-white tonality gives her pictures a starkness that has become the hallmark of her personal style. And hers is a telling gaze. -- Dr S Kalidas CAPTIONS: Poetic imagery: Dayanita's camera manages to bring out the pathos of the lonely St Lawrence Church against a gloomy sky. Mrs Menezes Braganza in a polka dotted dress seems to strike a balance with the blooming flowers. Prettily poised: Dayanita portrays images of the Catholics. Here she captures the frame of mother and daughter, Luisa and Melissa Cordeiro. The ballroom in the Braganza house reflects the opulence of another age. Pictures of piety: Both the nondescript roadside shrine and eminent cartoonist Mario Miranda's lavish chapel occupy pride of place in Dayanita's frames. Favourite things: Even a humble fruit like the watermelon creates a deining moment for Dayanita. She also finds beauty in seemingly prosaic objects collected by the townsfolk. Present perfect: Dayanita captures images of the new era in gayle and her sister Nicole, and contrasts it with Santa Monica nunnery, now the Museum of Christian Art. ----------- Dayanita Singh was born in 1961 in New Delhi. She currently lives and works here. She studied visual communication at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad and photojournalism and documentary photography at the Internatioal Centre of Photography, New York. Published ni DISCOVER INDIA, August 2005 issue. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--W-E-B--S-I-T-E--=-=-=-=-=-= To Subscribe/Unsubscribe from Saligaonet | http://www.goacom.com/saligao_tinto/ ============================================================================ * Send e=mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (NOT saligaonet@goacom.com) * Leave SUBJECT blank <--- Commom Mistake !! * On first line of the BODY of your message, type: subscribe saligaonet YOUR.EMAIL OR unsubscribe saligaonet YOUR.EMAIL Questions/Problems? Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]