When I entered fashion photography in 2014, everyone in India was photographing white or Eastern European models. Even the technical education around photography—the references, the lighting, the beauty standards—was built around white skin. Gradually, without even noticing it, I began to believe that beauty had to look a certain way. I developed what I now understand was an identity crisis. I often say I felt ugly in my own industry. Every time someone clicked a picture of me, I would hide my face. I was making a great living and constantly on assignment, but I never really felt at home in my own work.
The answers didn’t come from buying better equipment. They came from travelling, talking to professionals and observing how photographers around the world approached their craft. More importantly, I realised that, in India, many of us were simply applying Western recipes to Indian realities. People often talk about representation as though it’s only about who’s standing in front of the camera. For me, it also became about how inaccurately brown skin had been photographed for decades. I was fixated on understanding what our skin actually looked like in photographs because if we couldn’t represent ourselves truthfully, how could we expect others to do it?
Alexander McQueen’s pre-spring/summer 2021 campaign. Photographed by Ashish Shah.
The challenge was that every international brief demanded the same thing: colourful India, rhapsodic Jaipur, crowded flower markets. I live in Mumbai. The city is grey. When I travel to Delhi for work, the sky there is grey too. Most of our lives happen in ordinary colours. I began to wonder why everyday India was so absent from global fashion imagery. When Alexander McQueen asked me to photograph their pre-spring/summer 2021 collection, we had every opportunity to shoot in spectacular locations. Instead, I asked them to come to the hometown I had once longed to escape. It was important to me that global audiences see and accept a mundane India. We photographed theatrical gowns and structured suits on Dehradun’s rooftops, surrounded by hills and textured walls.
The more I questioned pre-existing ideas of homogeneity, the more I realised I also had to question myself. I get bored very quickly, which has probably saved me as a photographer. The moment I become comfortable with a process, I start distrusting it. If natural light becomes my comfort zone, I’ll force myself to work with flash. I’ll take on projects that remove every inch of control. I photographed a friend’s wedding in Delhi last year for that very reason. Weddings don’t wait for photographers. You can’t ask someone to repeat an embrace or recreate a laugh. Everything happens once, and you’re constantly catching up. I wanted to remind myself what it felt like to work without certainty, because certainty can become dangerous for a creative person.
