Photography as a Mirror
Meeting the self through the lens | India in 35mm
What follows is a selection of analogue images I shot and printed in my darkroom project in Udaipur, India, between 2009 and 2011. It may be truncated in your email, so please click through to enjoy this story in the app.
Photography As a Mirror | Meeting the Self Through the Lens | India in 35mm
There is a moment in the night when the constant thrum of the city stills, and the steady orchestra of night critters is only interrupted by the occasional roar of an auto rickshaw whizzing by on the empty streets. This is when I close the latch to my darkroom and let the world slip away. The plywood structure built against the kitchen counter of my apartment in Udaipur becomes an alchemical laboratory where I conjure eternity to dance with me in the darkness. In a country that constantly invades my privacy and is always in my face, I feel satisfyingly alone in this task.
I expose a fresh sheet of Ilford Warmtone Fibre Paper under my enlarger, watching the time count down on a cheap digital clock under a dim red light. In these few seconds, I have calculated how long I need to dodge a face and burn a corner to adjust the exposure before transferring the paper to the developing wash. This is the best part. In the liminal space between exposing paper with light and image and agitating it in the developing tray, I step into a timeless realm where now forever exists, caught and then begged to live again in the slow swish of chemicals rocking back and forth like a tide polishing beach glass. From the in-between emerges every shade of grey between black and white until a set of eyes I once looked inside of through my lens are staring back at me beneath the glimmering edges of the liquid.
Darkroom work is utter magic,
and I am a magician
making the time-bound timeless.
Why do these people let me look so deep inside of them? Why do they let me in? A stranger, a girl with a camera, came from another world.
In India, there are no awkward glances or shy gazes at the ground or peeking out of the corner of your eye. Here, people let me look into them and they look right inside of me too, often leaving me feeling exposed and vulnerable. The upside to the invasive stares is that I can stare back. I can travel through the eyes into a person’s soul and see what they are made of. They don’t even smile or try to be cute. It is a rare kind of honesty that one gives generously in this country, and I am addicted to it; I can’t stop looking into people.
As the images and memories of those I have met across India come to life before my eyes, I see something else that I haven’t noticed until now: myself. Trapped in the gaze of each wandering holy man or wise woman is a portrait of me, a frame of my perspective in a moment, what caught my attention, my willingness to cross a threshold and meet the unknown.
I am looking for something in all of these faces. Our sameness. Our humanity. Our truth. The divine bits of the mundane alive in you and me. I am thirsty to drink from the chalice of self-understanding through relationships with others. I want my walls to be crossed, too; I want to lay down in submission like Shiva beneath Kali, the Great Mother, the dark one. I drip with the yearning to be made to feel alive by the kohl-rimmed gazes of itinerant vagabonds who have renounced the material world in an intoxicating pursuit of the sublime. I yearn to cross the veil, be led to the inner sanctum, and be allowed behind the curtain in the penetrating gazes of these strangers who I stop in the middle of their lives and ask, "Can I take your picture, please?"
It is in the slowness of film photography; and the intimacy created with a single image that I am able to look deeper than usual. In the eyes of my subjects I see how photography is as much about them as it is about myself. Each time I approach an unfamiliar person and cross the divide, I feel a nervous pinch in my gut and a quickening of my breath. I come to my own edges, the places where I am afraid to build a bridge from my heart to theirs. I summon the courage to walk up to a stranger out of the blue and ask them to stare into my Pentax K1000 while I capture a part of them forever on my roll of 35mm film. But in so doing I preserve a part of me too.
Photography, then, is a mirror, not just to capture the image of the other, but one in which we can look at ourselves in unflinching honesty, where we can see ourselves reflected in eyes and smiles and the vulnerability of another turning toward us in their humanity.
Perhaps all photographs then are truly portraits of ourselves.
The Photographer Who Inspired This Project
In 2008, I attended a darkroom basics course with the iconic and much beloved Western Canadian photographer and SAIT teacher, George Webber. His captivating and intimate portraiture of Western Canada inspired my darkroom project in India. The depth and intimacy of his photographic work and kindness as a human truly inspired me to take up analogue photography and learn how to print images. In this endeavor I learned to slow down and go deeper in my connections with my subjects, a gift I will always be grateful for. Here, you can watch a recent documentary about his life and work and get a backstage view to the actual darkroom where I first learned this magic.
Girl this was so beautiful. Thank you as always ♥️
Yamuna. These portraits are so beautiful. Just stunning. This is a great read. I never understood and still do not understand these great moments that exist in the darkroom...but it sounds like it is special.