I live in images: Dayanita Singh on contact sheets & her 'museums'

Art and photography are synonymous with Dayanita Singh. Over the past 30 years, the iconic photographer has constantly innovated, and made her art more accessible to the public, through book exhibitions, book objects, and more. Recently, in a hall full of art and photography enthusiasts in New Delhi, she displayed her books -- Sent a Letter and Museum Bhawan -- and talked about her love for photography and the need to disseminate her work.

She told SheThePeople.TV that she first made the Sent a Letter book exhibition then she made Museum Bhawan, which is a family of nine mobile museums, and finally she decided to make an accordion fold box of 10 accordion fold books -- this is Museum Bhawan. “It is a book and a museum and it is everything to me. I produced it, I created it. It is like my child,” Dayanita told SheThePeople.TV.

A picture clicked by Dayanita Singh 

About her connection with books and technology both at the same time, she explained, “Well, I am fortunate to be the middle generation who has access to both. Your generation may not have access to both. To me, they are both forms of dissemination and I want to enjoy them both. They do it differently but they disseminate all the same.”

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The 55 year old photographer said that dissemination of her work and photography is what she loves the most about her work and that is why she is not a painter or sculptor...that is why she chose photography as a medium.

Dayanita's book object

“I think what really lies in the future is to really put the book object on the wall as a work of art for it to be valued, seen, received, sold, bought. Like you would buy a painting, like you would buy a photograph, I would hope the day will come when you would buy my book object,” said Dayanita about the future of work.

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Dayanita is an artist much beyond her time. She has been revolutionizing the medium of distribution of photography through museums since more than a decade now. Her ideas of bringing it closer to the masses through objects like book objects has been respected and appreciated all over the world.