How and why Abhishek Khedekar became a photographer and not a playwright is an interesting conversation on its own, but when browsing through his 2023 photobook, ‘Tamasha’ the roles of a playwright and photographer do not seem too dissimilar. Published by Loose Joints, an independent publisher based in Marseille, the book feels both light and heavy in turn, but in an intentional way, much like the theatre itself. I came upon the book at the Loose Joints stall at the 2024 Printed Matter Art Book Fair, and managed to steal some time with it while wedged between their rickety table and the thronging crowds of fairgoers. To flip through this bright and buoyant book was akin to hearing the rhythms of dialogue being practised and delivered in turn, to seeing sets being made and dismantled, and the playwright gathering their thoughts on the page, both over and under the images that unfolded across its pages.

But to understand why photography and the theatre are cousins in Abhishek’s practice, it is useful to recognize what the town of Dapoli itself means to him. About 200 km from Mumbai, India’s financial capital, Dapoli rarely features in the news outside of coastal Maharashtra. The sea is a key economic resource for its people. In fact, one of the first bodies of work Abhishek undertook as a photographer, while a student of photography at the National Institute of Design (NID) was to document his childhood friend Ashish as he went out to sea on his boat. Describing it as a dizzying experience, for Abhishek, the project was also an exercise in learning the role that editing plays in telling a story. Of course, with every new arrangement of photographs, a new story emerges, so how does one arrive at one that feels most authentic, or compelling? The work that eventually became the book Tamasha too began at NID as Abhishek’s final thesis project. With the time, space and relative freedom that the thesis period allowed him, the urge to return to the magic of the theatre returned. But to simply document theatre does not necessarily make for an interesting story to tell through photographs.

Also, what does it mean to properly document something? Do you photograph only the play as it happens, or do you also photograph the rehearsals, the actors dressing and undressing, and the sets being made and unmade? Do you photograph the daily exhaustion of entertaining entire towns, of moving from town to town after each gruelling set of performances? How do you document the fact that the troupe of the Tamasha are largely caste-oppressed and otherwise marginalised families living and working together¹, who are relegated to the outskirts of villages and not shown kindness or hospitality by the towns they entertain?

To find the right form for Tamasha took Abhishek many years. Years in which he graduated from NID, worked as an assistant to the renowned Indian photographer Bharat Sikka, and returned repeatedly to photograph in Dapoli, and to wherever the Tamasha troupes took him. It is all about telling the right story. And for Abhishek, that meant departing from photography when he felt it was too restrictive. Collages, archives, research into the social and political history of Tamasha, as well as audio, have all found their way into the work. To see the book is to experience, albeit in a different shade, the surprise of images and sequences you know (or suspect) are not “truth”, but which feel Real. You almost hear the music and the laughter of the crowd in the distance as you find yourself inside a story that is as old as time but is also new with every retelling.

Time is a critical aspect of every artistic medium, and while photography has long struggled with the implications of the “split second” and the “snapshot”, its relationship with time is in fact, always in flux. Photographing Dapoli over many years, slowly, on medium format film, and whenever he can get a chance to make the journey from his base in New Delhi, Abhishek has been weaving time – the changes it brings within people, the land, his friends, and the life of the town into a longer body of work. This patient eye is evident in his work as a commercial photographer too, bringing a fresh and sometimes unusual perspective to the world of fashion and editorial photography.

¹ Paik, S. (2022). The vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India. Stanford University Press.

As an emerging young artist, Abhishek’s work has caught the attention of an audience far beyond the bounds of the little town of Dapoli, and India’s metropolitan cities. His work has been exhibited in a solo show at the Webber Gallery in London, received runner-up recognition by the Aperture Portfolio Prize 2024, and is also part of an ongoing group show presented by Open Doors Gallery, as part of the OD Photo Prize 2024. While his work travels and finds new audiences, Abhishek continues his measured practice, listening as much as he is seeing, and allowing his practice to be just that – a continued, and sustained practice.