HOW TO BUILD A FAMILY HOME

In Dayanita Singh’s photographs of B.V. Doshi and the homes he has designed, architecture is brought alive by a touch both human and humane

- Dayanita Singh and Mustansir Dalvi

ARE ARCHITECTS BUILDING spaces with the photograph in mind? That would be a dangerous trend if that were so,” muses Dayanita Singh, as she tells Balkrishna Doshi that the relationship between architecture and photography is ‘tricky’. This eminent photographer/ artist’s conversations with India’s only Pritzker Prize Laureate and most loved architect stay within this liminal ‘tricky’ space, giving us a book quite unlike either one on photography or on architecture.

Singh accepted a commission from an international magazine on architecture to photograph Doshi’s home in Ahmedabad because she wanted to meet him. What was to be a routine assignment changed the moment Doshi asked her how she would make a still photograph speak. This sparked off a conversation between the two that led her to return several times to photograph homes designed by Doshi (the Kamala House in Ahmedabad, the Tejal House and Maneesha House in Vadodara) and to spend time with his family.