Artisan Camera
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 1. January 2018
Book
96 pages
978-93-83145-10-2 (ISBN)
Description
Artisan Camera is a testimony to an era of hands-on studio photography, when physical materials combined with the photographer's artistry to shape the final image. This book features work from Studio Suhag in Nagda, a small town in central India. Suresh Punjabi - the studio's proprietor and photographer - showcases some of his vintage photographs from the 1970s and 1980s. They evoke a world where the studio portrait was an important memento, capturing not just the 'real' subject, but also a persona made over to meet the camera's eye. A richly argued essay by visual anthropologist Christopher Pinney - author of Camera Indica - places Punjabi's work in the context of a visual history.
Reviews / Votes
"Surviving the onslaught of time, studio photographs of the late '70s and '80s capturing the human drama of small town life make up a remarkable book." The Hindu, IndiaMore details
Persons
Author
Christopher Pinney is a writer, an anthropologist and an art historian. He is currently Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at University College London. His book Camera Indica traces photography's various purposes and goals in India from colonial through postcolonial times, and was published in 1997.
Suresh Punjabi is the proprietor and photographer of Studio Suhag in Nagda, a small town in central India, almost exactly half-way between Delhi and Mumbai. The studio was founded by Suresh together with his brother Mahesh in the late 1970s.