Waswo X. Waswo (November 13, 1953), is a photographer and writer most commonly associated with his chemical process sepia-toned photographs of

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, and also hand-colored portraits made at his studio in Udaipur, Rajasthan. Waswo’s first major book, ''India Poems: The Photographs'', was in part a challenge to politically correct notions of the western artist's role in responding to Asia, and his work has been critiqued in the light of cultural theories that stem from

Edward Said Edward Wadie Said (; , ; 1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.Robert Young, ''Whit ...

and his book '' Orientalism.''

Biography

Waswo was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A. He studied at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and later at Studio Marangoni, the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Florence, Italy. After extensive worldwide travels he settled in India in 2001.

India Poems

Waswo's photographs of Indian landscapes and people were showcased in the traveling exhibition titled 'India Poems' organised with the support of Alliance Française, Kashi Art Gallery, and Cymroza Art Gallery. The exhibition traveled to Cochin, Bangalore, Bombay, Udaipur and Goa, and also was exhibited in Colombo and Kandy in Sri Lanka. "India Poems" culminated in a show at The Haggerty Museum of Art in Waswo's hometown of Milwaukee. Waswo's ''India Poems'' exhibitions and book were widely written about in India. An article by Curtis Carter eventually appeared in ''The International Yearbook of Aesthetics'' titled "Invented Worlds: India Through the Camera Lens of Waswo X. Waswo".

Studio in Rajasthan

Since ''India Poems'' Waswo has created a series of studio portraits at his home in

Udaipur Udaipur () ( ISO 15919: ''Udayapura''), historically named as Udayapura, is a city and municipal corporation in Udaipur district of the state of Rajasthan, India. It is the administrative headquarter of Udaipur district. It is the historic cap ...

, Rajasthan, following the tradition of Indian studio portraitists such as those done by

Lala Deen Dayal Raja Lala Deen Dayal (; 1844–1905; also written as 'Din Dyal' and 'Diyal' in his early years), famously known as Raja Deen Dayal) was an Indian photographer. His career began in the mid-1870s as a commissioned photographer; eventually he set u ...

. Waswo has collaborated with

Rajesh Soni Rajesh Soni (6 August 1981) is an artist living in Udaipur, Rajasthan, who has become known primarily for his abilities to hand paint digital photographs. He is the son of artist Lalit Soni, and the grandson of Prabhu Lal Soni, who was once cour ...

, a local craftsman who hand-paints Waswo's digital prints. Some of these portraits have been published as the book ''Men of Rajasthan'' by Serindia Contemporary in Chicago. Waswo also has collaborated with the miniaturist painter

Rakesh Vijay Rakesh Vijay (22 March 1970), professionally known as R. Vijay, is a Rajasthani miniaturist best known for his collaborative work with American artist Waswo X. Waswo. R. Vijay received little formal training and his miniature painting style has ...

to create an autobiographical picture-story of his life in India and the accompanying emotions of both alienation and the sense of western privilege. Waswo’s collaborations with Rajsh Soni and R. Vijay are collectively titled "A Studio in Rajasthan" and have been written about by London-based art critic

Edward Lucie-Smith John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith (born 27 February 1933), known as Edward Lucie-Smith, is a Jamaican-born English writer, poet, art critic, curator and broadcaster. He has been highly prolific in these fields, writing or editing over a hundred ...

.Edward Lucie-Smith and Dr. Alka Pande (catalogue essays), A Studio in Rajasthan, Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2008 April Harvest

From 2007 Waswo has concentrated almost exclusively on the Studio in Rajasthan series of hand-coloured portraits. This has resulted in several exhibitions in India and abroad, most notably "Tinted by Tradition", a retrospective of this work held at the Bhagwat Prakash Photo Gallery at Udaipur's City Palace Museum. Tinted by Tradition also traced the continuum of hand-painted photographs in the Mewar court, including examples of hand-painted photographs by Rajesh Soni's grandfather Prabhu Lal Verma (Soni). Waswo has continued collaborating in the making of symbolic and autobiographical miniatures with the painter R. Vijay. Waswo sees these miniatures as distinct but parallel body of work. The three collaborators, Waswo, Soni, and Vijay, mounted an exhibition titled "Confessions of an Evil Orientalist" in December 2011 at Gallery Espace in New Delhi. Incorporating more experimental media such as installation, a video, and even a comic book, the exhibition extended their normal repertoire of hand-coloured photographs and miniatures. ''Confessions of an Evil Orientalist'' revolved around a list of 101 confessions, written by Waswo in both a sincere and tongue-in-cheek manner, which alluded once again to issues of hegemony, Orientalism, and cultural acceptance. These confessions found expression within three text-based works of art in the exhibition, each viewing the words of the constructed "Evil Orientalist" from a different perspective. It has been suggested that these works moved from a post-colonial discourse to a post-post-colonial discourse.

Acclaims and criticisms

Waswo's sepia work has been compared to early 20th-century photographers such as

Edward Curtis Edward Sherriff Curtis (February 19, 1868 – October 19, 1952) was an American photographer and ethnologist whose work focused on the American West and on Native American people. Sometimes referred to as the "Shadow Catcher", Curtis traveled ...

, but his inclusion of self-portraiture draws analogies to postmodernists such as

Cindy Sherman Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. Her breakthrough work is often co ...

, who works in series, typically photographing herself in a range of costumes. Waswo's work has encouraged debate on the ethical questions of photography, especially the question of a westerner's role in photographing a foreign land. Bangalore-based artist Pushpamala N. in an article titled "Photographing the Natives" criticizes that Waswo follows the long tradition of hegemonic and largely negative western depictions of the East. She quotes, "The "truths" that Waswo seeks to reveal are not so personal or hidden. In fact they belong to a long history of representing the subcontinent that go back a hundred and fifty years. If one history of seeing India was to see it as an underdeveloped, decadent and inferior subject civilization, another was to posit the inherent "spiritualism" of the East against the crass materialism of the West. In constructing his archetypal "Other", Waswo is unable to escape from an inherited way of seeing the Indian landscape and its people". Indian writer and cultural theorist

Ranjit Hoskote Ranjit Hoskote (born 1969) is an Indian poet, art critic, cultural theorist and independent curator. He has been honoured by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, with the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award and the Sahitya ...

defends Waswo against Pushpamala's criticism. He says that artists like Waswo, when they step into the Indian situation – choosing to live and work in India and taking Indian subjects as the focus of their work – are either idolised or stigmatised: there is no middle ground of response for them to occupy. He further argues that, "Ideologically, Waswo's art is often obliged to justify itself to those who view it as no more than a contemporary projection of classical Orientalism; formally, it is not infrequently forced to explain its affinities with the lineage of pictorialism. To viewers habituated to the fast-forward of artistic strategies that deploy the newest media, also, Waswo may have to defend his retrieval of a 19th-century approach in the 21st century, while declining to be giddily playful or coolly subversive in the postmodernist fashion approved by the practitioners of retro chic. But Waswo's photographic images ought to be viewed in a spirit that can transcend such entrenched, guilt-based binaries of affront and critique, offence and defensiveness. These images are subtle, classical, mannered in the best sense. At the same time, they are unquestionably the testimony of a gaze that is empathetic, for Waswo's observations are made from the viewpoint of a transitive, relational self that releases itself to its subjects, rather than suffocating them in a colonialist authorial embrace."

Art collector

In India Waswo is also known as a collector of fine art prints. He regularly blogs his "Collection of Indian Printmaking", which contains historical and contemporary examples of Indian etchings, lithographs, woodcuts and screen prints. In the fall of 2011 Waswo was guest editor of a trilogy on Indian printmaking put out by the Calcutta-based art magazine ''Art Etc. news&views''. Waswo is one of the contributing photographers in Ekalokam Trust for Photography's

Project 365 Project 365 is an initiative by EtP (Ekalokam Trust for Photography) to create and preserve photographic visuals of the ancient Indian culture and contemporary lifestyle of Tiruvannamalai a South Indian ancient town in Tamil Nadu. Project 365 is pa ...

Tiruvannamalai Tiruvannamalai ( Tamil: ''Tiruvaṇṇāmalai'' IPA: , otherwise spelt ''Thiruvannamalai''; ''Trinomali'' or ''Trinomalee'' on British records) is a city, a spiritual, cultural, economic hub and also the administrative headquarters of Tiruva ...

, a public photo-art project that collectively creates and preserves photographic visuals of the fast vanishing landscape, customs, culture of Dravidian society in

South India South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union territ ...

References

CNN-IBN CNN-News18 (originally CNN-IBN) is an Indian English-language news television channel founded by Raghav Bahl based in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. It is currently co-owned by Network18 Group and Warner Bros. Discovery. CNN provides internat ...

broadcast about the Delhi show
Aired nationally in India. *Waswo X. Waswo on

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large na ...