The Aesthetics of Contemporary Indian Photography in an “Incredible India”

Abstract

Unrelenting delivery of image feeds via Web and mobile technologies prompt consideration of whether any element of the social or physical world has gone unphotographed. In the case of a country as firmly entrenched in a global imaginary as India, the question arises as to whether the production of yet more images adds anything new to the so many “Indias” already in circulation. Is there a territory of the as yet unseen that photography can bring into visibility? The changing politics and day-to-day realities defining and affecting contemporary India provide a strong impetus for photographic imagery that reaches beyond the conventions of realism which have so strongly informed documentary photography and photojournalistic representations of the subcontinent, and which continues to get recycled via search engines, the media and stock photography industry. This article focuses on work coming out of India that is arguably far less aligned with the “instrumental realism” that has long been used in photography to signify “India” or Indianness. Analysis attends to how relatively new modes of photographic rhetoric in the selected works engage with lives and issues that are less often seen in images of India.