Dayanita Singh (born 18 March 1961) is an Indian photographer whose primary format is the book. She has published fourteen books. Singh's art reflects and expands on the ways in which people relate to photographic images. Her later works, drawn from her extensive photographic oeuvre, are a series of mobile museums allowing her images to be endlessly edited, sequenced, archived and displayed. Stemming from her interest in the archive, the museums present her photographs as interconnected bodies of work that are full of both poetic and narrative possibilities. Publishing is also a significant part of Singh's practice. She has created multiple "book-objects" – works that are concurrently books, art objects, exhibitions, and catalogues – often with the publisher

Steidl Steidl is a German-language publisher, an international publisher of photobooks, and a printing company, based in Göttingen, Germany. It was started in 1968 by Gerhard Steidl and is still run by him. Overview The company was started by Ger ...

. ''Museum Bhavan'' has been shown at the

Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the R ...

, London (2013), the

Museum für Moderne Kunst The Museum für Moderne Kunst (''Museum of Modern Art''), or short MMK, in Frankfurt, was founded in 1981 and opened to the public 6 June 1991. The museum was designed by the Viennese architect Hans Hollein. Because of its triangular shape, it ...

, Frankfurt (2014), the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (2014) and the

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) is a private modern and contemporary art museum with locations in New Delhi and Noida. Established in 2010, it is India's first private museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art. The core collection of ...

, New Delhi (2016).

Early life and background

Singh was born in

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament Ho ...

on 18 March 1961. She was the oldest of four sisters. Singh studied Visual Communication at the

National Institute of Design The National Institutes of Design (NIDs) are a group of autonomous public design universities in India, with the primary institute, founded in 1961, in Ahmedabad, with extension campuses in Gandhinagar and Bengaluru. The other NIDs are loc ...

in Ahmedabad and later Documentary Photography at the

International Center of Photography The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. She started her career in photojournalism and retired in the late 1990s.

Career

Singh's first foray into photography and bookmaking came through a chance encounter with tabla player

Zakir Hussain Zakir Hussain ( ur, , link=no) is the name of: * Zakir Husain (politician), an Indian politician and former president of India * Zakir Hussain (actor), Bollywood actor * Zakir Hussain (field hockey) (1934–2019), Pakistani field hockey player * ...

, when he invited her to photograph him in rehearsal after she was shoved by an aggressive official while attempting to shoot him in concert. For the six winters following, Singh documented several Hussain tours and, in 1986, finally published the images in her first book, ''Zakir Hussain''. Referring to him as her first "true guru", Singh believes that Hussain taught her the most important of all skills: focus. Singh's second book, ''Myself Mona Ahmed'' was published in 2001, after more than a decade spent on assignment as a photojournalist. A mix of photobook, biography, autobiography and fiction, this 'visual novel' emerged as a result of her refusal to be the subject of what could have been a routine but problematic photojournalistic project as well as her discomfort with the West's tendency to view India through simplistic, exotic lenses. Dayanita singh book museum 05

In the years following, publishing has been a significant part of Singh's career. She has created multiple "book-objects" – works that are concurrently books, art objects, exhibitions, and catalogues—often in collaboration with the publisher

Gerhard Steidl Gerhard Steidl (born 1950) is a German printer and publisher. He is the founder of the publishing company Steidl. In 2020, he was awarded the Gutenberg Prize of the International Gutenberg Society and the City of Mainz. Life and work Gerhard Stei ...

in Göttingen, Germany. These include ''Privacy,'' ''Chairs'', the direction-changing ''Go Away Closer'', the seven-volume ''Sent a Letter'', ''Blue Book'', ''Dream Villa'', ''Fileroom'' and ''Museum of Chance.'' ''Sent a Letter'' was included in the 2011 Phaidon Press book ''Defining Contemporary Art: 25 years in 200 Pivotal Artworks.'' Steidl said in a 2013 interview on Deutsche Welle television, "She is the genius of book making". ''Dream Villa'' was produced during her Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography given annually by the

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, with ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

; Singh was its second recipient in 2008. The "book-object" medium has allowed Singh to explore her interest in the poetic and narrative possibility of sequence and re-sequence, allowing her to create photographic patterns while simultaneously disrupting them. Her books rarely include text; instead she lets the photographs speak for themselves. These ideas are furthered through her experimentation with alternate ways of producing and viewing photographs to explore how people relate to photographic images. Singh has created and displayed a series of mobile museums, giving her the space to constantly sequence, edit, and archive her images. These mobile museums stemmed in large part from Singh's interest in archives and the archival process. Her mobile museums are displayed in large wooden architectural structures that can be rearranged and opened or closed in various ways. Each holds 70 to 140 photographs that Singh rearranges for each show so that only a portion of the photos or parts of each images are visible at any given time, capitalizing on the interconnected and fluid capacity of her work while allowing ample opportunity for evolving narratives and interpretations. ''Museum Bhavan'' has been shown at the

, London (2013), the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2014), the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (2014) and the

, New Delhi (2016). Singh's works have also been presented at the German pavilion in the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

. In 2009, the

Fundación MAPFRE Fundación is a town and municipality of the Colombian Department of Magdalena. Its people are known as Fundanenses. The primary economic activity is livestock-raising, for production of both meat and milk. Other crops are: corn, yuca, o ...

in Madrid organised a retrospective of her work, which subsequently travelled to Amsterdam, Bogota and Umea. Her pictures of "File Rooms" were first presented in the exhibition, ''Illuminazione,'' at the 2011 Venice Biennale. In 2014, at the National Museum, New Delhi, Singh built the Book Museum using her publications ''File Room'' and ''Privacy'' as well as her mother's book, ''Nony Singh: The Archivist''. And she also displayed a part of ''Kitchen Museum'' which are accordion-fold books with silver gelatin prints in 8 teak vitrines that she makes as letters to fellow travellers or conservationists since 2000. Seven of these were published by Steidl as "Sent a Letter". Singh also presented the ''Museum of Chance'' as a book-object for the first time in India in November 2014 at a show in the Goethe-Institut in Mumbai and in January 2015 at a show in the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan in New Delhi. The book-object is a work that is a book, an art object, an exhibition and a catalogue, all at once. In order to move away from showing editioned prints framed on the wall, Singh made the book itself the art object: a work to be valued, looked at and read as such, rather than being regarded as a gathering of photographic reproductions. In 2018, Singh released ''Museum Bhavan'' as a book. It is an "exhibition" in the form of a book, with "galleries" held in a small box containing nine thin accordion books that expand to a 7.5-foot-long gallery of black and white photos drawn from Singh's archive. In 2017 ''Museum Bhavan'' won PhotoBook of the Year in the

Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards The Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards is a yearly photography book award that is given jointly by Paris Photo and Aperture Foundation. It is announced at the Paris Photo fair and was established in 2012. The categories are First P ...

and in 2018 was awarded the Infinity Award of the

. Dayanita Singh served as a Jury Member for the Serendipity Arles Grant 2020.

Publications

Book objects

* ''Box 507,'' Spontaneous, New Delhi. * ''Box of Shedding,'' Spontaneous, New Delhi. * ''BV Box,'' Spontaneous, New Delhi. * ''Pothi Box,'' Spontaneous, New Delhi. * ''Kochi Box,'' Spontaneous, New Delhi. * ''Museum of Chance Book Object.'' * ''File Room Book Object''

Books by Singh

* ''Zakir Hussain,'' Himalaya, 1986. * ''Myself Mona Ahmed,'' Scalo, 2001. * ''Privacy,''

, 2004. * ''Chairs,''

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts, which houses significant examples of European, Asian, and American art. Its collection includes paintings, sculpture, tapestries, and decorative arts. It was found ...

and Steidl, 2005. * ''Go Away Closer,'' Steidl, 2006. * ''Sent a Letter,'' Steidl, 2008. * ''Blue Book,'' Steidl, 2009. ISBN 978-3-86521-839-1 * ''Dream Villa,'' Steidl, 2010. * ''House of Love,'' Radius & Peabody Museum 2011. * ''File Room,'' Steidl, 2013. * ''Museum of Chance,'' Steidl, 2015. * ''Museum Bhavan,'' Steidl, 2017. * ''Zakir Hussain Maquette,'' Steidl, 2019.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

* 2000 I am as I am, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham * 2003 Dayanita Singh: Image/Text (Photographs 1989–2002), Department of Art and Aesthetics. Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi * 2003 Myself Mona Ahmed,

Museum of Asian Art The Museum of Asian Art (german: Museum für Asiatische Kunst) is a part of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin since 2020. Before its relocation it was sited in the neighborhood of the borough of , Berlin, Germany. It is one of the Berlin State Museums ...

, Berlin * 2003 Dayanita Singh: Privacy, Nationalgalerie im

Hamburger Bahnhof Hamburger Bahnhof is the former terminus of the Berlin–Hamburg Railway in Berlin, Germany, on Invalidenstrasse in the Moabit district opposite the Charité hospital. Today it serves as a contemporary art museum, the , part of the Berlin Nati ...

, Berlin * 2004 Privacy, Rencontres-Arles, Arles * 2005 Chairs, Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, Boston * 2007 Go Away Closer, Kriti gallery, Varanasi * 2008 Sent a Letter, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai * 2008 Les Rencontres d'Arles festival, France * 2010 Dayanita Singh (Photographs 1989 – 2010), Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, Netherlands * 2010 Dayanita Singh, Mapfre Foundation, Madrid * 2011 Dayanita Singh, Museum of Art, Bogota * 2011 House of Love, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge * 2012 Monuments of Knowledge, Photographs by Dayanita Singh, King's College London * 2012 Dayanita Singh / The Adventures of a Photographer,

Bildmuseet Bildmuseet ( en, Museum of Visual Arts) is a contemporary art museum in Umeå, northern Sweden. History The museum was founded in 1981 by Umeå University and it exhibits Swedish and international contemporary art, visual culture, design, and a ...

, Umea University, Sweden * 2013 Go Away Closer, Hayward Gallery, London * 2014 Building the Book Museum: photography, language, form National Museum, New Delhi * 2014 Go Away Closer, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt * 2014 Dayanita Singh, Art Institute, Chicago * 2014 Museum of Chance: A Book Story, Goethe-Institut, Mumbai * 2015 Dayanita Singh: Book works, Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi * 2015–2016 Conversation Chambers Museum Bhavan,

, New Delhi * 2016 Museum of Chance Book Object, Hawa Mahal, Jaipur *2016 Museum of Chance Book Object,

Dhaka Art Summit Dhaka Art Summit is an art summit held in Dhaka, Bangladesh and is organised by Samdani Art Foundation, a non- profit art infrastructure development organisation founded by Nadia Samdani. and Rajeeb Samdani in 2011. About The summit displays ...

, Bangladesh *2017 Dayanita Singh: Museum Bhavan,Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo *2022 Dayanita Singh: Dancing with my Camera,

Gropius Bau Martin-Gropius-Bau, commonly known as Gropius Bau, is an important exhibition building in Berlin, Germany. Originally a museum of applied arts, the building has been a listed historical monument since 1966. It is located at 7 Niederkirchnerstra� ...

, Berlin

Group exhibitions

* 1995 So many worlds—Photographs from DU Magazine, Holderbank, Aargau, Switzerland * 2000 Century City,

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...

, London * 2002 Photo Sphere, Nature Morte, New Delhi * 2005 ''Edge of Desire'', Asia Society, New York * 2005 Presence, Sepia International, New York * 2006 Cities in Transition, NYC, Boston Hartford * 2013

Biennale di Venezia The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

, German Pavilion * 2016

Biennale of Sydney The Biennale of Sydney is an international festival of contemporary art, held every two years in Sydney, Australia. It is a large and well-attended contemporary visual arts event in the country. Alongside the Venice and São Paulo biennales and ...

Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), located on George Street in Sydney's The Rocks neighbourhood, is solely dedicated to exhibiting, interpreting, and collecting contemporary art, from across Australia and around the world. It is ...

, Australia *2016

, Bangladesh *2017

, London. *2018 Fearless: Contemporary South Asian Art, Art Gallery New South Wales, Sydney *2018 57th Carnegie International,

Carnegie Museum of Art The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsbur ...

, Pittsburgh *2019 ''Surrounds: 11 Installations'', The

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York *2020 ''Off the Wall'',

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and wa ...

, San Francisco

Honors and awards

* 2008 Robert Gardner Fellowship, Harvard University * 2008 Prince Claus Award, Government of The Netherlands *2014 Chevalier dans l' Ordre des Arts et des Lettres *2017 Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards, PhotoBook of the Year: ''Museum Bhavan'' *2018 International Center of Photography Infinity Award, Artist's Book: ''Museum Bhavan'' *2022:

Hasselblad Award The Hasselblad Award (in full: Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography) is an award granted to "a photographer recognized for major achievements". History The award—and the Hasselblad Foundation—was set up from the estate ...

, Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg, Sweden. An award of 2 million Swedish krona, or about US$206,500.

Collections

Singh's work is held in the following permanent collections: *

Allen Memorial Art Museum The Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM) is an art museum located in Oberlin, Ohio, and it is run by Oberlin College. Founded in 1917, the collection contains over 15,000 works of art. Overview The AMAM is primarily a teaching museum and is aimed at ...

, Oberlin, Ohio * Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney * Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago * Asian Art Museum, San Francisco *

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

, Paris * National Centre for Visual Arts, CNAP, France * Fondazione MAST, Bologna *

Fotomuseum Winterthur Fotomuseum Winterthur is a museum of photography in Winterthur, Switzerland. History The museum was founded in 1993 and is dedicated to photography as art form and document, and as a representation of reality. Fotomuseum Winterthur is an art g ...

, Winterthur * Fundacion Mapfre, Madrid * Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University *

Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography is the oldest photography museum in Amsterdam, opened in 1999. Huis Marseille was the first photography museum in the Netherlands when it opened in 1999; the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, the Fotomuseu ...

, Amsterdam *

Kunsthaus Zurich Kunsthaus ( German meaning "art house") may refer to: * Kunsthaus Graz *Kunsthaus Tacheles *KunstHausWien *Kunsthaus Zürich The Kunsthaus Zürich is in terms of area the biggest art museum of Switzerland and houses one of the most important art ...

, Switzerland *

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is an art museum located on the shore of the Øresund Sound in Humlebæk, north of Copenhagen, Denmark. It is the most visited art museum in Denmark, and has an extensive permanent collection of modern and cont ...

, Humlebaek * Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, Boston * Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai * Mead Art Gallery, University of Warwick * Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts *

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, New York *

Moderna Museet Moderna Museet ("the Museum of Modern Art"), Stockholm, Sweden, is a state museum for modern and contemporary art located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, opened in 1958. In 2009, the museum opened a new branch in Malmö i ...

, Stockholm *

, Frankfurt * Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas *

Museum of Modern Art, New York The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

, Canberra *

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the ...

, Ottawa *

National Gallery of Modern Art National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, c ...

, New Delhi *

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of Asian art. In 2007, ''Time'' magaz ...

, Kansas City, Missouri *

The New Art Gallery Walsall The New Art Gallery Walsall is a modern and contemporary art gallery sited in the centre of the West Midlands town of Walsall, England. It was built with £21 million of public funding, including £15.75 million from the UK National Lottery an ...

, Walsall * University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Chicago *

Tokyo Photographic Art Museum The is an art museum concentrating on photography. As the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, it was founded by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and is in Meguro-ku, a short walk from Ebisu station in southwest Tokyo. The museum also ...

Southampton City Art Gallery The Southampton City Art Gallery is an art gallery in Southampton, southern England. It is located in the Civic Centre on Commercial Road. The gallery opened in 1939 with much of the initial funding from the gallery coming from two bequests, o ...

, Southampton *

, London

References

External links

* *Through the cracks of a mirro
Published in ShahidulNews, 6 December 2008What Goes on in the Minds of India's Most Famous Photographers?

Video

Stealing in the night. An interview with Dayanita Singh
Video by

Louisiana Channel Louisiana Channel is a non-profit web-TV channel based at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark. By the end of the first year, 28 November 2013, Louisiana Channel had published 130 videos featuring international artists, film m ...

Dayanita Singh – Slide Lecture: Chandigarh Lalit Kala AkademiDayanita SinghThe Wall TV: Video 2 – Signing her love – Dayanita Singh

Navina Sundram-Dayanita Singh Lectures:Chandigarh ...

Dayanita Singh al Padiglione Germania (Francia) Biennale 2013

Dayanita Singh Delhi Photo Festival
{{DEFAULTSORT:Singh, Dayanita Indian photojournalists 1961 births Living people People from New Delhi Indian portrait photographers National Institute of Design alumni Social documentary photographers Indian women journalists Indian women photographers 20th-century Indian journalists Journalists from Delhi 20th-century Indian women artists 21st-century Indian photographers 21st-century Indian women artists 21st-century Indian journalists 20th-century Indian women writers 21st-century Indian women writers Women writers from Delhi Women artists from Delhi Photographers from Delhi 20th-century women photographers 21st-century women photographers Designers at National Institute of Design Women photojournalists