Overview

'I only came to photography because of the book. I don’t make photos just to make photos—they’re the blocks with which I build the book.' - Dayanita Singh This book is Dayanita Singh’s meditative, sometimes melancholic exploration of a range of work environments across India. It comprises three visual chapters, each springing from individual, larger series in Singh’s archive which she has now re-edited around the theme of work. The first, “Museum of Machines,” presents black-and-white images of factory equipment, stately despite its grime, and only occasionally joined by human counterparts. “Blue Book” shows photographs of industrial landscapes Singh made on her wanderings—exceptionally in color, the serendipitous outcome of running out of black-and-white film. All are tinged with the same eerie hue and form a poetic critique of the sites of labor. “Go Away Closer” returns us to black and white, and reveals the greatest range of subjects, from thousands of scooters in a warehouse to the charming clutter of a shop, and are taken from a series Singh originally edited according to what she calls the “note and feeling” of the images. Together, the chapters are furthermore a blueprint for the work involved in Singh’s own bookmaking: the unceasing reassessment of her archive and its rebirth in book form.

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9783969991831

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Dayanita Singh was born in New Delhi in 1961 and studied at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad and the International Center of Photography in New York. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; the Art Institute of Chicago; Hayward Gallery, London; the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. In 2013 she represented Germany at the Venice Biennale. Bookmaking is central to Singh’s practice. Her books with Steidl include Privacy (2004), Chairs (2005), Go Away Closer(2007), Sent a Letter (2007), Dream Villa (2010), File Room (2013), Museum of Chance (2014), Museum Bhavan (2017, Book of the Year at the 2017 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards and winner of the 2018 ICP Infinity Award for Artist’s Book), Zakir Hussain Maquette (2019), Let’s See (2022) and Sea of Files (2022). Singh is the 2022 Hasselblad Award recipient.

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