Tara L. C. Sood
The Studio

Exhibition Details

In India, before cameras became widespread, there was a photo studio at every village corner. They were a record of the passage of generations, vast archives of the living and the dead.

Studios were an instrument for record- keeping. At the same time, they expanded reality. They were the place to become one’s favorite actors, to wear clothes one wouldn’t typically wear, or to show grand gestures of love. Fantasies and aspirations were made possible by the camera and its magic. With colour photography being still an unaffordable luxury, inks and oil paints imprinted golden jewels on black and white images. Props, backgrounds and costumes were extensions of the imagination, practical means of approaching the unattainable.

The Studio is a tribute to the playful, theatrical, performative and aspirational nature of this tradition. It is Tara L.C. Sood’s attempt at faithfully narrating her country of origin, keeping Western stereotypes away: cacophony, poverty, exoticism and clashing colour combinations, which often describe India by the spectacularizing, colonizing gaze.

It is an ode to the image’s world-building power, and a celebration of the work it requires: the slow construction of a human relationship between the photographer and the subject, made possible by the intimacy of the studio. Within its walls, the duration of each image is dilated: it is the time of putting found objects together, coordinating projections and possibilities, and giving temporary form to a portion of reality, making sure it never fades again.