In Person: Live with The Analogue Approach Project (TAAP)

Initiated by curator Rahaab Allana and supported by the MurthyNAYAK Foundation, The Analogue Approach Project (TAAP) is a Delhi-based initiative that explores the culture of printmaking, the perspectives of printmakers and the stories behind their images. As creative collaborator, Srinivas Kuruganti leads the darkroom workshops at TAAP which began in August 2021. This monthly, fully funded workshop gives three practitioners the space to refine their technical skills and understand the relationship between exposure, film development and the finished print in the darkroom. Aswin Sharma, Ishani Singhal and Jaisingh Nageswaran are the three participants for December.

For the ninth episode of In Person we speak with Kuruganti, Sharma, Singhal and Nageswaran about the darkroom workshops at TAAP. Facilitated by Kuruganti, these workshops seek to provide practitioners from India the space and training to work in the darkroom—from shooting on analogue cameras and processing their own film to making prints from those negatives. For a generation of photographers who grew up learning photography on digital mediums, the physical process of working in the darkroom to print photographs is absolutely unfamiliar. With contemporary photographers finding their way back to analogue cameras and printmaking processes in the recent years, these workshops aim to provide the infrastructure and mentorship that are largely absent for anyone who may wish to explore the medium.

Srinivas Kuruganti is a Delhi based photographer who has lived and worked in New York and London, with his work focusing on environmental issues, ranging from ship-breaking to coal-mining. Aswin Sharma is a photographer based in Kalimpong and a member of The Confluence Collective, and through his multimedia work he brings forth stories from the Darjeeling hills. Ishani Singhal is a Sociology graduate and a freelance fashion stylist who explores themes of identity and culture through her visual work. Jaisingh Nageswaran is a self-taught photographer from Madurai, Tamil Nadu, whose practice revolves around documenting socially vulnerable communities in India as well as issues of rural life. He is an active member of the 13Jara collective and also became a Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellow in 2021.

^{(Featured Image: At The Analogue Approach Project dark room, Delhi. Image courtesy of Srinivas Kuruganti.)}

Streamed live on 11 December 2021.

To read more about The Analogue Approach Project and Srinivas Kuruganti, please click here and here.

In case you missed the previous episodes of In Person, you can watch the most recent ones here, here, here and here.