“In my image-making practice, I see sunlight as both my medium and material,” Anuja Dasgupta says. “My creative practice began with photography, and very early on, I withdrew myself from the digital. Teaching myself the discipline of the analog made me eventually go back to camera-less photography — something I had given a shot at as a teenager, when I first fell in love with the wonders of sunlight.”

A visual artist, educator, and entrepreneur based in Ladakh, Dasgupta is one of the most interesting photographers working in India today, not least because of her camera-less approach to image-making. An alternative method of capturing images on a photosensitive surface without using a camera, camera-less photography has been exploited and reinterpreted by successive generations of image-makers and continues to be used by contemporary artists today.

While tangentially related to the conventional practices of photography, camera-less images offer an alternative, experimental, radical, and often revelatory form of vision to both image-maker and image-observer. Camera-less photographers abandon the camera — and therefore its capabilities as well as its constraints — at the outset in favour of a more direct and inherently metaphorical rendering of the photographic phenomena.

Dasgupta’s chosen method of camera-less photography is the ‘anthotype’ — a photographic image obtained using plant dyes, or photosensitive pigments sourced from plant materials, without the need for cameras, lenses, and other specialised equipment.

“My anthotypes, while being camera-less photographs, neither look nor function like photographs,” Dasgupta says. “The biggest reason behind my shift in making photographs was my unease with the impulse to make moments permanent. The plant matter I forage is entirely driven by the rhythm of the seasons; the matter itself changes from solid to liquid; and when exposed to sunlight, the pigments change colour, and continue to fade thereafter. None of these is in my control. Working with anthotypes has made me embrace uncertainty and ephemerality, which lets me tease the tenets of photography.”

Her current, ongoing project ‘Elemental Whispers’ — supported by the Prince Claus Fund and TOTO Awards — is an anthotype series set in Ladakh. “Living in Ladakh has had a profound impact on my practice, and that turned me back to one of the most easily available materials: sunlight,” Dasgupta says.

“This project is in collaboration with the rivers in Ladakh, which, on interacting with sunlight and wind, sign their own impressions onto the sheets, making each print unique,” Dasgupta explains of the anthotype image-making process. “Here, I am also attempting to push the boundaries of botanical imagery — shifting from a surgical approach to a mix of contemplation and play.”

‘Elemental Whispers’ was also a launchpad for her recent project in Switzerland titled ‘How does a river breathe?’ — a photo-installation supported by Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council. “The interconnected ecosystem of the Verzasca Valley threaded together my inquiries, observations, and reflections while working with the rivers in Ladakh,” Dasgupta says. “I wanted to display the anthotypes in a manner which would touch upon these, so the form of the Endless Knot came to me quite naturally. Viewers walked through the installation, mapping the knot with neither a beginning nor an end, echoing the interconnected physiology of the natural world.”

Anuja Dasgupta is currently in residence at the NIROX Sculpture Park in South Africa, supported by the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation in collaboration with the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa at the University of Witwatersrand.

Follow Anuja Dasgupta here.

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