Dayanita Singh: Photo Titles Panel Discussion

This week I took myself along to an panel discussion at the Southbank Centre on the photographer, Dayanita Singh and in particular her photo books. This coincides with her current exhibition on at the Hayward Gallery. It's been a while since I have done something like this and I forgot you can make notes so this post is just a stream of thoughts that stuck.

The panel included Liz Jobey, Associate Editor of the Financial Times Weekend Magazine, James Lingwood, Co-Director of Artangel and Walter Keller, co-founder of Parkett magazine and Fotomuseum Winterthur and founder of Scalo Publishing - aka people who know they're talking about. After a general introduction of the photographer and her passion for books above anything else, they look how she edits her own work.

I was interested in the topic of how Singh 'unedits' and 'disedits' her work to create new bodies and new stories. The huge body of work on contemporary India she has grown will never be finished. 20 year old images are on the same page as 2 year old images. Suggesting like life it is chaotic, complete with no ending and no beginning.

James Lingwood mentioned the similarities with the The Library of Babel with the impossible library full of every possible book and biography of every person who ever lived and ever will live. This pleases me being a Doctor Who fan and they had a whole episode on this written by Stephen Moffat. I digress!

Dayanita Singh

The way she places images together can evoke story lines from the viewer, independently connecting them together. One book, 'Go Away Closer' has the opening image of a girl sleeping on a bed, followed by a series of empty photographs. Empty beds,chairs, rooms and negative space surronding them. Lingwood thought this is the girl dreaming. The emotive photographs are portraits of the room and also the person who inhabits them, even after death. I actually do this in my own work so was cool to see such a world renowned name doing the same!

One more thing that stuck with me is the hand made books filled with tiny prints of her travels. One is made for a friend who she travels with and the other is kept for herself to be out on a shelf in the kitchen, which resulted in the kitchen museum. They open up to be a little private exhibition.