Dayanita Singh

Go Away Closer, 2001-2006

Dayanita Singh has developed her own photographic language, creating poetic horizons and ambiguously legible narratives. The idea of the photograph as an all-embracing image of a ‘complete,’ ‘valid’ story that has only to be understood and followed through has been set aside. Singh’s photographs are looking for viewers who will edit them, imaginatively, charging the images with possible stories relating with their own experiences, informing them with their own cultural and psychological cast of mind. The Go Away Closer photo series shows theatre interiors in Bombay and elsewhere, the surface of the water outside the Devi Garh Palace, a factory in Puna, a wedding, all the images real, all the images unreal. “To me that is an expression for the ambiguous relationship one has with love and loss and memory. Wanting, not wanting, not being able to let go. And then your reading which may have nothing to do with my saga.” (D.S.)