They Live Still
Nisanth Srinivasan is a young visual artist based in Bangalore, India who has never used a stills camera and film to make photographs. However, his work recreates the look and feel of analogue images, using digital files and a range of photographic techniques. These include re-photographing found images and scanning the pages of old books and magazines. Why does a contemporary image-maker foreground this strategy in their practice?
The accompanying essay by Allan Parker considers some answers to this question and explores how digital technologies fall short in what they offer to the image-makers of today.
“Contemporary life includes bonds with the past which cannot be so easily discarded. For urban dwellers, the built landscape forms the bedrock of the look and feel of the world ‘out there’. Residual grime and combustibility threaten to disrupt any dreams of a perfected, marketable present; a project which requires a vigorous edit of the surroundings to produce sufficiently idealized images to grease the rails of commercial ambition.
“The creation of mood and atmosphere provided by the material aspects of photography – in which we could include printmaking techniques as well as the presence of ‘poor’ images, all conspire to populate a psychological landscape replete with mystery and banality; its hues and textures seeping across the tonal range of anxiety and desire.
“…an act of analogue rebellion in an obnoxiously digital world” Teju Cole on the Photobook in The Guardian 24 Feb 2020
Full colour, 76 pages, section-sewn swiss (open) binding with 2-Col screen-printed cover, blind embossed title.
£12.00
ISBN: 978-0-9564105-4-2
Essay: Allan F. Parker
Images: Nisanth Srinivasan
Design and production: www.purelandpress.net
Editor: Anita Dawood
Printed in India
78pp plus cover
For larger orders please contact allan@pureland.co.uk or phone 020 7831 7094.