Colonial Contemplations from The Photo-Studio
‘We Are Always Working’, at Gallery Latitude 28 showcases the tongue-in-cheek hand-tinted studio photographs by Waswo X Waswo and his collaborators, Rajasthani miniaturist Rajesh Soni and Shyam Lal Kumar
The first time one met Waswo X Waswo, was at the now historic Café Mondegar, in Colaba Causeway, Mumbai, nearly fourteen years ago. He was visiting the Maximum City to launch his coffee table book of sepia-tinted photographs featuring portraits of the people of India and beautiful vistas that recalled the East-Indian Company School style of viewing India as this rich land of natural resources and spirituality.
Titled Indian Poems, the 2006 book was a very ‘innocent’ and perhaps a bit ‘touristy’ view of India, when compared to his delightful tongue-in-cheek studio portraiture that has evolved over his two-decade-long practice in India, having set up a studio in Udaipur where he collaborates with Rajasthani miniaturist Rajesh Soni and traditional terracotta sculptor Shyam Lal Kumhar. Here he creates works that take a wonderfully humorous view of Post Colonialism, art practice, photography, the notion of the studio portrait laced with the subtle but unmistaken homo-erotic subtext embedded within the imagery.
Now Gallery Latitude 28 presents ‘We Are Always Working’, curated by Bhavna Kakar, showcasing works produced by the Wisconsin-born, American photographer and his collaborators, Soni and Kumar. The works are part-portraiture from Waswo and Soni’s well-known Studio in the Rajasthan series, and part spoof on both the studio process and the photographer himself. “This exhibition will call attention to the place of performance, or the “stage”, upon which studio photography is enacted. The title, ‘We Are Always Working’, references the ongoing process Waswo and his studio engage in, both physically, as well as in a wider philosophical discourse concerning his practice and methods,” writes Kakar.
Waswo’s career in India has spanned almost two decades, where he references the practice of studio photography as a method of self-discovery, navigating between ‘personal revelation and inspired fantasy’. With traditionally hand-painted backdrops, the photographic studio became a quasi-diorama in which Waswo and his models playfully devised a series of tableaux. His elaborate processes, involving casting local people as ‘models’ in the photoshoots, are akin to co-operative theatre performances.
In this particular series, we see some dramatic portrayals that playfully toys with the idea of the Post-Colonial ‘white’ male and the tawny-skinned native, interacting in tropes that throw into question the ‘master-slave’ trope, the educated gent and the ‘savage natives’, with of course a heavy awareness of the problematics of these constructs. Photographs like ‘The Mutiny’, depict Waswo as cowering from an attack of bear-chested native youth, armed with various sharp-bladed objects, ‘The Expedition’, where he is the gentleman observer with his telescope, surrounded by ‘Company School’ type hunters, or ‘The Obervationist in Stolen Garden Series’, a prized moment where Waswo is happily rowing away in a boat with a young bear-chested native holding an umbrella over him protectively.
Importantly, Waswo’s sepia photographs, hand-painted by Udaipur based photo hand colorist Rajesh Soni, take on a ‘dream-like quality’, which harks back to ‘ethnographic photography’ of our bygone eras while maintaining temporal roots in the contemporary. It serves up an interesting play and critique of the ‘white explorer’ in a brown world.
“Interplay develops between the villagers who populate Waswo’s work, the caricature of Waswo himself and ‘artifacts’, which he inspects under a magnifying glass,” observes Kakar. As the protagonist of many of the photographs, dressed’ incongruously in a white suit and fedora hat’, Waswo takes on the role of ‘The Orientalist’, interspersed throughout the exhibition.
Waswo himself states: “We created a character which was supposed to represent me and my adventures in India, but as time went on to become sort of an ‘everyman’. I stopped thinking of him being explicitly myself, or specifically myself. Now (the character) has leaped back into the photographs,” he explains.
Waswo studied at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, The Milwaukee Center for Photography, and Studio Marangoni, The Centre for Contemporary Photography in Florence, Italy. He has brought out books like Men of Rajasthan, published by Serindia Contemporary in 2011 (soft-cover) and 2014 (hardcover), and has been available worldwide. The artist, writer, and collector have lived and traveled in India for over sixteen years and he has made his home in Udaipur, Rajasthan, for the past nine years. We may look forward to his explorations with his collaborators to comment upon the evolving idea of Post-Colonial India in a contemporary context.
(Join Gallery Latitude 28 for a Zoom ‘cocktail’ preview of the Exhibition ‘WE ARE ALWAYS WORKING’ By WASWO X WASWO. Meet and greet and wine salutations: 28th August 2020, 6:30 PM – IST , 9:00 AM – New York 2:00 PM – London Eminent art historian Giles Tillotson and Waswo X Waswo will be giving a virtual walkthrough of the exhibition at 6.45 PM.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4522280849
Meeting ID: 452 228 0849
To tune into live-stream on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/865692427288216/)
https://www.facebook.com/events/865692427288216/)
Text by Georgina Maddox
Images courtesy: Gallery Latitude 28 and studio Waswo X Waswo
Find out more about the Artist and Gallery:
https://www.instagram.com/rajeshsoniudaipur/?hl=en
