One Amongst: A Photoseries Lending A Subaltern Lens To High-Street Fashion

Image Courtesy: Sarang Gupta Sarang Gupta

Sarang Gupta is an Indian photographer whose work melds a keen eye for aesthetic detail, a mastery of the delicate interplay of light and shadow and an understanding of the individual elements of fashion photography that has allowed him to turn his work into an ostensibly post-modern deconstruction of traditional norms and push the envelope for what constitutes ‘high-street fashion photography’.

In his latest series, ‘One Amongst’, he pushes his ideas even further to create a compelling visual narrative that brings his unwavering dedication to his craft to life. We sat down with the young creative to discuss the series itself, his process, his influences, and much more.

Can you tell us a little about ‘One Amongst’?

‘One Amongst’ stands at the intersection of fashion and style and is simultaneously an antithesis to the extant idea of fashion in its high-street sense as also a reimagination of the value fashion holds for people. If you might refer to the ongoing conversation on Indian fashion, both popular and academic streams will highlight the word ‘aspiration’ ever so often. However, do we only think of ‘fashion’ in India as that which exists for and according to a certain web of industries or trends? As a medium of creative expression, fashion must be elsewhere too and must exist beyond industrial aspirations. In an attempt to shift the gaze to an almost subaltern way of defining fashion, my latest project ‘One Amongst’, a photo-series shot with a 26-year-old model from Jharkhand in old Delhi, narrates the story of a boy with burgeoning dreams and ideas that are fashionable in merely their way of being so. ‘One Amongst’ seeks to tell the story of square pegs in smaller, square holes who harbour sensibilities of style but can neither afford the knowledge nor the expensive raiment to be fashionable as the existing definitions would permit them to be. And so, they imagine and create and thrift, mix and match, not to stand apart but simply to express and exist in a way that does justice to their idea of fashion.

Image Courtesy: Sarang Gupta

What are some of your biggest inspirations over the years of your artistic career and why?

It’s been different things at different times but good cinema and great auteurs have always been on top of that list. I think cinema becomes a wider stage for many different art forms to get accumulated, structured and then presented as a story which when done well, is the apex of human expression. One example is Ari Aster and how he re-examined horror as a genre which is not caricaturish has been on my mind as of late.

Describe your creative process and the purpose with which you create.

How do you turn the chaos that is this world into a book that you can read and try to make some sense of it if you’re not a writer? I photograph! My work is an ever-evolving map for me to navigate society. My visual notes may be a journal of both import and noteworthiness but it also has trivial and inconsequential things at times.

Which is your favourite piece of work of your own & why?

I find the act of making images more engaging and joyous than obsessing over the images I make. I create, I forget and I look for new things to photograph, so I think all of it and none at the same time.

Image Courtesy: Sarang Gupta

What’s one track you’re currently listening to?

It’s A Strange Glorious World by Nicholas Britell

What’s a project you wish you were a part of and why?

Not a project but I wish I could meet and probably just watch Saul Leiter photograph the streets of New York, the man who created poetry aimlessly, just for the joy of photographing the world.