ZA :

As a workshop facilitator, I was wondering what are some of the questions and enquiries within the visual language that interest you while interacting with students?

AV :

When I meet photographers at workshops, we usually work on editing and building narrative structures, but an important part of this process is also how they write about their work. I find there is great pressure to place a work within specific prisms of photography and this can deeply affect how photographers themselves will approach a work. If you write about it in one way, you will also think about it in the same way. So instead of photographers talking about the work, we try to see what the image desires to share and then we question why we feel compelled to use certain words, not just for our photography but also for our experiences. It is in the joy of suspending ourselves from what we thought we were photographing that new worlds begin to form. I saw this absolute joy - the discovery of an image in a new way - when I was at a workshop with Dayanita Singh. I felt like a child blowing bubbles, forming many worlds, if I let go of what I wanted to see. For the PhotoBook Intensive program, this manifests in many different ways. The idea is to play with images until you reach a point where the photograph needs to stand for what it shares, not what you need it to be. And if we can allow someone to gently ‘be,’ it reveals their relationship with the story. Once you can arrive at that moment, which is not always easy - editing, understanding what a story needs and imagining book forms reveal themselves with deep clarity. There are different ways in which we get there - listening to music together, working with body movement, talking and sharing our lives, and sometimes with moments that we never imagine or can orchestrate for ourselves. Recently, I worked with one of our workshop participants to experiment with sculptural forms from a dummy book we created in a workshop. The idea was not to say that the book is now a sculptural piece but to observe how our body responds to the physicality of that act. Until now, for our editions we have lived together during the workshop and in that intimate moment when we’re cooking together, or living together, or eating together, the story begins to come together. I'm not only interested in the words and images you will use to describe the work, but I want to know how your body shifts when you move from one sentence to another. I want to know when your voice changes, and where it changes. Because if I'm going to sit with you on an edit, or a layout, or a book design - these are my cues to help make it yours.

ZA :

To me, the two distinctive threads that reveal themselves in your own documentary projects have often been about ecological impacts and community traditions. Could you touch upon what draws you to these themes?

AV :

I think it’s the relationships that I’ve built while documenting communities that has really stayed with me. It’s enriched a way of thinking and an approach to life that has lingered on far longer than the photographs themselves. This is what I meant when I said that the thrill for me is not the making of the image, but the arrival of the image. The arrival is the assimilation of conversations, experiences, friendships, and relationships during the act of documentation. While working on a project on midwifery in Dhaima, and its deep relations with ancestral beliefs and ways of life, I met with dais (midwife) and shamans across 4 states in India with deep histories. On one of these journeys, I was introducing myself to a family in Chattisgarh, and one of the dais (midwife) wanted to know where my placenta was buried, it seemed an important factor for her to place me on the map. For her, ritual had dictated that when a child is born, the placenta is buried underneath the cot it was birthed on. This will be their way of knowing where they come from and where they need to go. If they are lost, this shall ground them. I was fascinated how this placement of origin was so rooted to the soil. To think of belonging in that way- something that is so inseparable from your being. This has stayed with me deeply.

ZA :

This idea of collaborative creation has also continued in Guftgu, your deconstructed photobook featuring works by contemporary photographers from South Asia under The Offset Projects banner. I was fascinated that it traversed across multiple thematic voices all at once. Ranging from personal stories, childhood nostalgia, fictional narratives, and enquiries into the meaning of a photograph, the book stands alone as strongly as it stands together. What was it like bringing such vastly different themes under one roof?

AV :

I appreciate you saying that these chapters can be their own little segments as well, if they were to be separated from the book. My understanding of photography has grown with friends, some of whom are also practitioners, but with whom all questions could be asked, disagreements could be discussed, and anxieties could be shared. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, I started the Guftgu Talk Series to debunk a formalised way of discussing photography. I wanted to talk to practitioners about the loves and frustrations about their relationship with photography. The first edition of the Guftgu book published in 2020 was essentially a response to this time, and was made with the intention of freely distributing the book to educational institutions in India and South Asia. I felt that this could be a way of bringing in conversations, thoughts and experiences that aren’t often discussed in a classroom. Since photobooks are mostly expensive, the book needed to feel like the reader could choose how they wanted to engage with it. It was the balance of making that access feel tactile, and doing justice to the process and work of photographers featured in the book that helped Guftgu find its form. The zine-like feel for each chapter and the different ways of approaching each publication structure were deeply guided by both these concerns. I was also extremely grateful for the generosity with which the artists allowed me to make edits and imagine their works in a book form. The response to the first edition was very unexpected and since then, we are now on our third edition of the book, the last two being available for sale.

ZA :

Why ‘Guftgu?’

AV :

There is a world in my mind that comes alive when I hear the sound of that word, it takes me inside rooms filled with people, to chai tapris, with friends where conversations begin and end with laughter but are also sprinkled with deep disagreements. It is the collective flow of each other’s thoughts to create a world of its own. A conversation without a defined agenda. My grandfather would often say,“Guftgu Jaari Rahe” (Let the conversations stay alive) and I feel it really resonates with me in the world today. It was also reflective of what I saw happening in the region and within the works of the practitioners curated for the book. It felt like we had similar inquiries but strong distinct approaches to finding answers. We can talk as practitioners and disagree with each other. We can fall in love with what the other person is saying. We can fight about it. We can pull each other's legs. And I think that it’s important to be able to do that. I don't want to be in an echo chamber where everyone is already clued into how I'm thinking, and what is “right.” It is when I hear from you and others that my world expands as well. Guftgu is a response to all of that.

ZA :

I recently came across an insightful series of conversations on instagram titled Photobook Conversations which Offset Projects seems to be involved in. It is described as a way to understand and experience photography as mediated through exhibitions, writing and publishing. Could you delve into this further? Yes, we're very excited, because we're co-publication as a way of looking at sustainable systems in photo book publishing. The book brings together Offset Projects from India, La Hydra in Mexico, and 1000 Words in London. Ana Casas Broda (Hydra + Fotografía), Duncan Wooldridge (Manchester Metropolitan University), and myself have co-edited this book and we’re publishing this in three parts of the world to bring in voices from different regions. I think it is a really great way to work collaboratively, and create larger circles and networks to engage with photography.