Photo studios are an interesting product of our culture. They feel almost dreamlike, like simulations, with their animated backdrops, coloured curtains, and blinding lights that make you blink every time the shutter goes off. Guaranteed. There’s always the photographer trying to coax a crying child into looking at the camera, urging a distracted teacher to smile, and, without fail, adjusting the lighting just enough to make you appear much fairer than you are.

I’ve been a victim of this myself: my face once emerged several shades lighter while my neck remained its actual colour, making it look as though I’d disastrously mismatched my foundation. In hindsight, it was comical.

But that gentle absurdity reveals something deeper. The photo studio has always tried to make you into something you’re not. It tries to capture you at your fairest, at your most obedient, essentially, you at your “best.” 

RANJ x Cliffr’s latest music video, “WHO YOU ARE,” dives into this very cultural understanding of a space that can seem quite simple — you go in, click a picture, and you’re out — but is actually intertwined with how we, as a society, want to be perceived and what we believe is worth documenting.

In the music video, the photography studio becomes a metaphor. A space that has since become outdated, similar to patriarchy. “We needed to make it interesting, especially because it’s talking about patriarchy versus society. We needed to personify it,” Apoorva Satish, the director says in conversation with Homegrown. “Outside (the photo studio), she’s able to see her world in a wider aspect. But as she enters the space, she’s constricted. She’s boxed into this version of a woman she should be.”

Everything in the video is intentional. From the telling name Gentleman’s Photo Studio to the careful construction of RANJ’s wardrobe, the set itself lends subtle cues about what the song loudly states. Her styling becomes a site of negotiation rather than rejection. Instead of abandoning cultural markers, she inhabits them differently. The clothes signal that tradition itself is not the antagonist but the rigidity with which it is imposed. RANJ, in the video, recalibrates her roots to claim independence and autonomy.

The video doesn’t ask any questions, it knows exactly what it is. Its colours are vibrant and unbridled, rage and joy both emanating from it. There is no softening of edges here, no attempt to universalise the experience for comfort. Instead, the visuals insist on specificity — on Tamilness, on womanhood, on memory. Together, they create a portrait of someone who is no longer willing to be corrected, coddled, or lightened to fit the frame.

In a genre that often defaults to hyper-masculinity, artists like RANJ, alongside others such as JQueen, are shifting the grammar of Indian rap, by reclaiming its subversive roots. For Satish, the political dimension of the video is inherent, not an added layer. In her view, art is shaped by the social hierarchies, and power dynamics that surround it. Its politics lie in what it chooses to show, who it chooses to centre, and which visual languages it chooses to disrupt. As Satish puts it, “I do believe art is political,” Satish says simply. “There’s no way of getting around it.”

The team behind the video:

Written & Directed by Apoorva Satish

Director of Photography - Faraz Alam

Production company - Hanzo

Artist - RANJ x Clifr

Label - Azadi Records.

Watch the music video of 'WHO YOU ARE' here.

Follow Apurva Satish here.

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