37 Indian Still Lifes

For this exhibition, Tasveer gave a brief to 37 of the leading photographers working in India today to investigate the subject of still life, and to see how this subject can be explored in a specifically Indian context. Whilst one of the central genres in the history of art, this has been an all but neglected field of enquiry in contemporary photography in India - overshadowed primarily by the social documentary of Indian photographers and the increasingly conceptualised gaze of foreign reportage in India. As such, the cultures, events and landscape of India are often documented, but the presentation of physical objects, and the narratives therein, remain largely un-investigated. Photographers include Karen Knorr, Vivek Vilasini, Saibal Das, Mahesh Shantaram, Neeta Madahar and Jyothi Bhatt.