Modernism on the Ganges

The exhibition will trace the full trajectory of the color street photography pioneer’s career from his early work as a photojournalist in the late 1960s through his last unpublished projects of the late 1990s. Using a handheld camera and color slide film, Singh recorded India’s dense milieu in complex frieze-like compositions, teeming with incident, fractured by reflections, and pulsating with opulent color. He embraced color as part of a continuous Indian aesthetic tradition that reaches back to the miniature paintings of the Mughal period, while being also deeply influenced by the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson (whom he met in Jaipur in 1966), Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray, and American street photographers such as William Gedney and Lee Friedlander.