Dayanita Singh

A Photo Essay

Zakir Hussain

House of Love

In Dream Villa Singh explores how the night transforms what seems ordinary by day into something mysterious and unsettling. This series of colour photographs presents a landscape which exists as much in the artist's imagination as in the real world. Singh travels to many different cities never knowing where Dream Villa or its inhabitants will present themselves. It is a place where nothing is quite as it seems to be - it comes alive at night, when all is lit by artificial light and the moon is just ornamentation.

Dream Villa

Dayanita Singhs Museum of Chance is a book about how life unfolds, and asks to be recorded and edited, along and off the axis of time. The inscrutably woven photographic sequence of Singhs Go Away Closer has now grown into a labyrinth of connections and correspondences. The thread through this novel-like web of happenings is that elusive entity called Chance. It is Chance that seems to disperse as well as gather fragments or clusters of experience, creating a form of simultaneity that is realized in the idea and matter of the book, with its interlaced or parallel timelines and patterns of recurrence and return. The eighty-eight quadratone images in the book will also appear on the front and back covers in random pairs, transforming each copy of the book into a distinct piece of work by the author.

Museum of Chance

Mona Ahmed

Myself Mona Ahmed

Stephanie Rosenthal

Originally trained as a photojournalist and bookmaker, Dayanita Singh (New Delhi, 1961) has exhibited widely both in India and abroad, her work often takes a curious view of the every day, and is characterised by an un­sparing view of her subject matter.Best-known for her por­traits of India's urban middle- and upper-classes, her images of people working, celebrating or resting depict everyday life without embellishment, capturing insights that often challenge the exotic stereotypes in the West.Working closely with the artist in the concept and design of this volume, Hayward Publishing presents Dayanita Singh: Go Away Closer, a unique and inventive new title on the work of this pioneer of contemporary photography.Included is an interview with the artist and an introduction by the exhibition curator, Stephanie Rosenthal.Published alongside an exhibition at The Hayward Gallery, London, 8 October - 15 December 2013.Photo caption: Dayanita Singh, Nalin and Natasha, 1996. Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London © The artist 2013

Dayanita Singh

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