Pamela Singh

Jaipur Self-Portrait No. 2, 2003

For many years, Pamela Singh worked as a photojournalist in a career that took her to several continents. During a five-year stint in Africa, she worked for UNICEF, the Washington Post, Paris Match, Newsweek, and Reuters. At first glance, the images in her photos exude an air of calm and tranquility, but they are also embued with a sense of esthetic tension, that is anchored in the initially barely noticeable, but still no less powerful interplay of roles within Indian society. The photos of Singh’s Jaipur Self-Portraits series show the photographer herself, emerged in pictures of different everyday scenes. The black and white photographs are colored with painting techniques – only the artist’s skin remains colorless; seemingly, she’s both an insider and outsider of contemporary Indian society. Singh’s photo collages are sparsely decorated with jewelry elements, in a manner reminiscent of the palimpsest technique, known to us from book illustrations.