Paintings reframed

Shivaani Shashi’s love affair with photography began with studying Visual Communications in Chennai, and then going to London to study photography portfolio development. Her stay there prompted her to look back and appreciate her cultural background, and that’s how her series of capturing Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings in pictures, Like A Painting was born. “I grew up seeing Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings on the wall of my house, depicting my Tamilian culture and his portrayal of women — and I was in complete awe. The hint of imagination in the art gives a surrealistic portrayal of beauty, and that’s visible in his work.”

What sets her work apart from similar projects by photographers like Richard Tuschman and Annie Leibovitz, is the attention given to recreating the minutest details. “Getting the hairdo right, tying the saree the right way, even sourcing the 18th century outfits and jewellery was hard. The casting and locations played an important role too, since Raja Ravi Varma’s painting focus on the naïve expressions of the subject. I personally approached Indian women in London who weren’t professional models for the series,” she shares.

Shivaani admits that it was not an easy venture. She adds, “Not only getting models for the project, even props were hard to forage. It was much harder to explain the paintings and the culture to people I was working with. For example, nobody knew about how to do the traditional hairdo of Kerala. So, I had to double as a hair stylist too! I learnt it through YouTube videos.”

Shivaani also sheds some light on the process — “To understand the effect of water and change over the years, I photographed on an iPhone (digital) and a film camera (analog). Whether it is analog or digital, irrespective of the method and technique used, effect of water on the subject and light has remained the same over the years. The interplay of what is in control and what is not, have yielded the painting-like effect.”

The fine art project with soft painting-like photos also earned accolades when it was exhibited as a part of RootEleven at The Rag Factory gallery in London in June.

When asked to weigh in on the debate of whether photography is better than painting, she responds, “The relationship between fine art and photography was once a competition but now has turned into a common alliance of vision, which is evident from the exhibits today. Photographers have taken influence from fine art works over the years for inspiration and vice versa.”

Although, she doesn’t believe she has created a signature style of her own in the few years she has worked as a photographer, she hopes to explore her interest in travel architecture — the history of architecture around the world — further.