Poster Syndrome: A photographer follows the eventful lives of political banners

What goes up must come down After their ceremonial debut on leadersrsquo birthdays and religious festivals political banners are often relegated to less flashy roles as makeshift roofs carpets waterproofing and packaging material at small neighbourhood businessesFor 13 years Mumbaibased photographer Ritesh Uttamchandani has paid attention to this lifecycle of such vinyl posters Their fall from grace his frames reveal is also an upswing in purpose fawning tributes to politicians who push nativist agendas often end up lining the shops of the very migrants they vehemently wanted out of the cityThe photographer and author documents Mumbai in all its poignant and goofy energy lsquoAfterlifersquo ndash his poster series ndash was shot in the midst of domestic errands and in the pauses between assignments Among the photographs is a 2004 one of an Indian National Congress banner of the wrapped around the statue of a goddess another belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party being peeled off a snack cart it was coveringThe series is currently on show at the Cymroza Art Gallery in his debut solo exhibition lsquoA Lease of Lifersquo curated by Ranjit HoskotePhotographer Ritesh Uttamchandani documents Mumbai in all its poignant and goofy energy Photo Ritesh UttamchandaniPlease share the story of how the lsquoAfterlifersquo series began When did it start to feel like a seriesI am drawn to the quieter smaller peripheral things which also say a lot about the main things In the same manner in 2004 I took that photograph of the goddessrsquo statue which was wrapped with a Congress poster and I didnrsquot think much of it I submitted that photograph to the newspaper I was working with and they published it I also didnrsquot think of it as a series then nor did I receive any feedback from any of my peers But in 2009 when I was with a magazine and I had a fair amount of time I was referring to my portfolio in search of an old image I saw this one and thought let me start looking and once I started looking I also started finding Itrsquos like one of those lsquothe universe conspiresrsquo kind of clicheacutes Thatrsquos how it started in 2009So what is the life cycle of the political poster And where did your search for its journey take youIn all honesty the lifecycle is pretty strange The posters come up when somebody wants to be in good regard with a politician Letrsquos assume I am a real estate crony I am not the builder but a middle man between the builder and politician etc Then I will wish the politician on their birthday there will be 100s of posters littering the street The same people who install them are in charge of uninstalling A lot of them go back to the printer While uninstalling letrsquos assume they tear The BMC takes it to their disposal unit Itrsquos a cheap and more or less free alternative to tarp so they also find their way into multiple usagePhoto Ritesh UttamchandaniWho takes the photographs on these posters What do you think of the photography featured on the postersI know some of the photographers who do these photos If you look at the design there is a hierarchy ndash somebodyrsquos face is bigger somebodyrsquos face is smaller some are high res photos and some are lowres ones that are pixelating A lot of politicians are visually literate we think they donrsquot know but you see them perform when they see the camera A lot of politicians have mastered the power of images ndash they know that a single image will travel faster than videos or words Former and present news photographers and fashion or commercial photographers do this work on the side The smaller chamchas go to studios or take pictures on their mobile phones It is a very passport snapshotish aesthetic There is a functional merit to it I donrsquot think much of it anyways ndash I think my opinion of them is clear in my photographs laughsHow has your view on posters evolved Do we need them at all or are they bad newsI am not a fan of sycophancy I was told to hold my idols for some time and then abandon them because the more you hold on your growth is kind of curtailed I used to like the masters of photography at one time but I kind of moved on My opinion remains the same We should not be a country of sycophants and chamchas So they are obviously bad news I think it was Kumar Ketkar who said that everyone comes to Bombay with a dream but no one comes with a dream for BombayPhoto Ritesh UttamchandaniDid you build the series organically during travels or were you setting out deliberately in search of these momentsI initially used to apply for funding and grants thinking if I get money I can take some time out to work on the project When I got time out there would be domestic errands and this and that Grant bodies have to understand the merit in this work they have to understand that it has some value That didnrsquot really work out Every time I go out I have a camera I always have my phone and SLR But I donrsquot believe that riyaaz must be done daily There are lots of factors that need to come together for a person to make a photograph including something as basic as a good breakfast I started doing things like leaving early for assignments loitering after assignments I would arrive late for drinking plans with friends they were pissed off but I would show them the image and talk about it with my eyes lit up and they would understand I have built it organically at my own pace in my own time That is only way to do thisDo you notice all the details in a photograph straight away or are there also surprises in the frameThere are surprises sometimes but I cannot rely on surprises all the time As a practice I do what I used to read when starting out on a website called photonet They had a guide on sports photography which said always take safety shots and then start messing around In the case of the lead shot of the exhibition the one with the poster being removed which is the only one in the series where there is some kind of motion involved ndash I had gone to buy soap and I saw that a cart was sitting unattended with this poster on it I took a couple of safety shots and then a crow came and sat The crow is a theme an accidental guest in most of my images I simply waited and out of the blue some guy came and just pulledoff the poster and started setting up the stall for the evening and I just managed one frame of it The thing is because I took the safety shot and I was standing and lingering that maybe someone in yellow or a contrasting colour will pass by that photograph happened But I also think it is important to go through the evolution where you have surprise elements in the beginning of your career as a photographerAre permissions ever a problem when youre taking these picturesMore than permissions its a matter of trust People usually think Im from the BMC or Irsquom from the government and Irsquom going to take these pictures and Irsquom going to complain to someone and get them thrown out Once the posters were being unwrapped and the boys who install them had to use their feet also They were worried that lsquoif someone sees that my foot is on this personrsquos face what will happenrsquo So there is this odd sort of reverence also which comes from religion and badon ka aadar karna chahiyeHow difficult is it finding new things to say about a city that is so chronicled Is Mumbai still fun to photographI have this book by Alex Levac a Israeli street photographer who says something to the effect of lsquoas long as humans are around there is always something interestingrsquo The city is always fun to photograph There is the other school of thought that goes to lsquolocationsrsquo like the Gateway etc but I feel the backgrounds are too imposing there those places are sitting ducks and that is no fun It is very challenging there is so much grey and beige in the suburbs there is so much uniformity that is being shoved down our throats as far as town planning and architecture is concerned For example in Lokhandwala there is an Arjun statue there are towers and behind them a sewage line and then this white Arjun statue which I encountered at 2 am once Such a bizarre scene with a heavy level of surrealism in it And right next to the statue was an empty bottle of wine It is a subtle image and it demands that the viewer read into what is happening It talks about the alpha male drunk on power which also influences the architecture and demands from the city or country for that matter A large portion of the images are shot in the city but they have a larger comment to makeYou said something very interesting about thinking not just in English but in different languages when youre on field How does that change how you see and what you seeIf you see the aesthetic deployed in the images of the posters it is not a fine art approach I find a lot of architectural photography and architectural comment via photography to be very formal and it is all designed to be hung on white walls This is not The first photo of the goddess I took in 2004 was a quick snapshot I had limitations of space and time and I was 22 I was formerly drawn to very dramatic images and this was very quiet and sliceoflife So I allowed that aesthetic to dictate the aesthetic of all the other images post 2009 When you are walking around in a slum cluster or SRA building or engaging with a fruit cart owner what language do you speak You speak in Hindi Marathi Gujarati It helps them understand and it helps me understand the scenario It influences the way I photograph When I am buying chana at a food cart I say lsquodost kidhar se aaye horsquo It is about how you build relationships and trust and explain what you are doingA Lease of Life on display at the Cymroza Art Gallery Mumbai Photo Ritesh UttamchandaniWhy are photography exhibitions few and far between in MumbaiConstantly people say lsquooh photojournalism is deadrsquo lsquophotography is deadrsquo lsquoit is moving in another directionrsquo I donrsquot think one thing has to die for something else to exist I think multiple versions of photography can coexist There is an unspoken demand for a photographer to have AV content as a part of the show These are things that are too subjective Some people are like lsquoI need better stimulation these are just photographsrsquo Well read the photographs who is stopping you Try and peel the layers try and see what you get out of it The best way to consume photographs is a book One can come back to it after 34 years also The deployment of your lived experience again influences the way you read the photographs What is being done about it More people should selfpublish cheaper books not your Rs 30004000 titles because that ensures your book remains in this rich elite circle only Create audiences We underestimate our audience also people understand and draw their meaning Keep publishing and keep showing This show has travelled to different audiences ndash schools colleges culture lab and international photo festivals where it was on streets for people to see now it is in a white space The more the work travels to diverse spaces the more photographers learn Photography is not going anywhereWhere will lsquoAfterlifersquo go from here The intention I had was to make a book what form the book will take and the production is what I am grappling with now Because the banners are electionagnostic I can start end pause and revisit it anytimeCurator Ranjit Hoskote calls you the ldquoguerilla archivist of the fugitive momentrdquo What are some other moments that you have chased and documented Only somebody who is so deeply clued into the history of art and photography in the subcontinent can come up with that reading of my work Even I did not know that my work fit into that space Ranjitrsquos description of this was spot on There have been many I photographed Gay Pride but found that was adding nothing to the visual understanding of the event Then I started looking at the bystanders there ndash who are these people who come to gape at the parade I started noticing that people were looking into other peoplersquos business all the time In trains the person sitting opposite me is reading the newspaper and somebody else is peeping into that They only read the piece that is available to them at that point of time once the person turns the page the other also has to move to the next page I found that very fascinating ndash the kind of information that is passed through the kind of dynamic that that is So I started photographing what I called ndash lsquothe snoopsrsquo ndash the people who look into other peoplersquos business on trains That also represents a kind of silent communication between the participants ndash most of the time unwilling It becomes a triangle ndash one person is snooping into another personrsquos paper and I am snooping into themlsquoA Lease of Lifersquo is on exhibition in Cymroza Art Gallery till March 9 2022 from 11 am to 7 pm It is a petfriendly show