Dayanita Singh

Dayanita Singh's photos of archives and their custodians across India examine how memory is made and how history is narrated. These images bring to light the paradox of archives: they are impersonal in their classifications, yet each is the careful handiwork of an individual archivist, an unsung keeper of history whose decisions generate the sources of much of our knowledge. Archives are vessels of orthodox fact but can also be the home of neglected details and forgotten documents than can unfix the status quo. As the pace of change in contemporary India accelerates and Indians turn from the past and fix their gaze on the future, what will become of the archive? Singh prompts us to imagine archives as not merely documents of dusty scholarship but as monuments of knowledge, beautiful in their unkempt order.

"Museum of Chance is the first publication of Museum Bhavan, which is a collection of museums made by Dayanita Singh in New Delhi. The museums hoiuse old and new images made by the artist. Each wooden structure can be placed and opened in different ways, and holds around a hundred framed images, some on view, while others wait for their turn in the reserve collection, also kept inside the structures. As Singh keeps adding images to the museums, the museums themselves give birth to other museums. For example, the Museum of Embraces comes out of the Museum of Chance, and the Museum of Vitrines is contained within the Museum of Furniture. This publication is a mass produced artist book for the museum by the same name. Each image in the book is a cover image on one of the books."--Colophon.

Text by Aveek Sen.

"The book is well known as Dayanita Singh's primary medium, one she explores to create new relationships between photography, publishing, the exhibition and the museum. But where did her passion for the book as the ideal vessel for her photos, for the stories she tells, begin? The answer lies in Zakir Hussain, a handmade maquette Singh crafted in 1986 as her first project as a graphic design student. The protagonist of Singh's photo essay is the Indian classical tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, whom she captured on the stage and at home with his family. Surrounding the photos are handwritten texts gleaned from interviews Singh made with her sitters, including insights from Hussain: 'I will always be a musician. A musician will always be a musician, not just me. He may stop performing but the musician is still there.' This Steidl facsimile edition is scanned from Singh's original maquette and reproduces all its 'imperfections' and idiosyncrasies including her pencilled notes about the book's construction--indications of the influential bookmaker to come. Shanay Jhaveri's accompanying essay discusses how Singh came to 'make' the original, referring to her student notes and exploring how she intuitively assembled the book, from editing the images to design, setting the ground for the book objects and photo architectures of her later practice."-- https://steidl.de/Books/Zakir-Hussain-Maquette-0011202261.html

In Dream Villa Singh explores how the night transforms what seems ordinary by day into something mysterious and unsettling. This series of colour photographs presents a landscape which exists as much in the artist's imagination as in the real world. Singh travels to many different cities never knowing where Dream Villa or its inhabitants will present themselves. It is a place where nothing is quite as it seems to be - it comes alive at night, when all is lit by artificial light and the moon is just ornamentation.

Now we can see / Geoff Dyer -- In conversation / Stephanie Rosenthal and Dayanita Singh -- Bookcarts -- File museum -- Little ladies museum 1961-present -- Museum of chance -- Museum of embraces -- Museum of furniture -- Museum of machines -- Museum of men, recent -- Museum of photography.

Accompanying Singh's first touring retrospective, this survey includes previously unseen early works, favorite series and new montages The internationally acclaimed photographer Dayanita Singh often describes herself as a "book artist." Accordingly, Singh was closely involved in the making of this magnificent exhibition catalog, which accompanies a major touring retrospective of Singh's work, curated by Stephanie Rosenthal for the Gropius Bau. The most comprehensive publication yet published on Singh's photographic art, it includes a series of long-form and short-form scholarly essays, full-color reproductions and installation images. The texts situate Singh's work in relation to topics such as Indian classical music, photographic lineages and traditions, conceptions of the archive, choreography and the economies of reproduction. Presenting every important phase in the photographer's oeuvre, Dancing with the Cameraalso enters Singh's archive to include never-before-seen early works from the 1980s, a new series of montages and the works Let's See, Museum of Chance, Museum of Shedding, I Am as I Am, Go Away Closerand Box 507, among others. Dayanita Singh(born 1961) is one of today's most important photographers. Her solo exhibitions have been held at MMK, Frankfurt; Hayward Gallery, London; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; and the Art Institute of Chicago.