Women Who Are Redefining India's Visual Topography

A fresh crop of female image-makers has successfully cut through the male-dominated cliques that have so far governed the Indian photography landscape. SHRIYA ZAMINDAR spotlights the new vanguard of women redefining India's visual topography

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APARNA AJI

As the art director of UK-based publication Wonderland, Aji’s images are heavily influenced by domestic life in India. Visuals cleverly packaged with a satirical undertone which she calls carefully constructed puns” abound in her portfolio. The Thiruvananthapuram-born photographer toys with concepts and disrupts preconceived notions of Indianness by bringing into the frame an authentic depiction of everyday life through social commentary.

‘The Central Saint Martins graduate describes her introduction to photography as a happy coincidence that manifested while fiddling with the camera as she took photos of her family around the house. It was the spark that encouraged her to experiment with images as a medium that questions the portrayal of South Asian culture. I’ve rarely come across pictorial representations that capture the essence of South Asian identities in an honest, non-exoticised light. It’s not always obvious to the eye, but it brings about a strange feeling, as if you're part of a case study in a faraway land,” she confesses.

‘There’s an intentionality to the way Aji’s pictures turn out; they’re a far cry from a romanticised representation of the local landscape. Instead, she attempts to quash antiquated notions of Indian cultural identity through seemingly unflattering aesthetics. Through my work, I like probing traditional ideas of errors and inaccuracies that separate the aesthetically good from its bad counterparts. I see it as my way of taunting photography’s colonial legacy and unselling the exoticised perspectives I had internalised as a child.”