Chitrakosh :

portfolio: Ishaan Dixit

(hindi) pictionary, a chronological format of mailbox.ishaan@gmail.com

photographs
My education of photography started when my father got me
my first camera at the age of 14 and taught me the basics of art
while me and my sister stood in front of a tree, season after season ,
through out the year.
This became the very foundation of my understanding on which,
I later developed myself as an architect and a photographer.
 project 01

Beyond the Vanishing Point:

The life and learnings of Late Homai Vyarawalla
India’s first woman photo-journalist
Late. Home Vyarawalla was India’s first woman photo-
journalist, the one who documented a major part of India’s
freedom struggle and later, the young India post it’s
independence.
Her life as an iconic photographer was documented by Delhi
based author Sabeena Gadihoke in her phonebook “The
chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla”.
My project starts where her documentation ended, i.e.
Life of Homai once she was lost in unknown. She lost
her family early in life and started staying alone in city
of Baroda in a secluded one bedroom terrace
apartment.
Even at the age of 98, she was completely
independent and an avid creator of things she needed
by recycling things she had around. Many of these
things used to be her photography and dark room
instruments .
Along with her teachings, I started documenting
these small things that she made for everyday use
from everyday things.
This collaboration (more of a blessing) went ahead
for a year and half till her demise in January of
2012.
 project 02

Criminal Tribes
Even after 64 years if Independence, over 60 million
Indians have no address, no citizenship, no identity proof
and above all, an unjust mark for being Born Criminals.
In year 1871, British Government started listing tribes
(usually Nomads indulged in acrobats, strolling actors,
hunter-gatherer etc.) under Criminal Tribes Act that
resulted into marginalising, neglecting and exclusion of
them from mainstream society. This started the stigma of
criminality attached to these tribes that has continued to
be in existence till date. Even after Independence, no
attempt was made for their vindication. Later in year
1952, Criminal Tribes Act was replaced by a series of
Habitual Offenders Act, which has changed nothing but
the name. The last community-wise census of these tribes
was done during the colonial time in 1931 and since then
only projections have been used to arrive at their current
population. According to it we have 313 Nomadic Tribes
and among them, 198 come under Denotified Tribes.
Living a life of uncertainty, illiteracy and lack of
resources have kept them away from administrative
positions and political arena. Their children are not
welcome in public schools and women of tribes still have
to struggle for dignity as laws preserving human rights
aren’t practiced when it comes to these tribes. Merely on
the grounds of suspicion, they usually are subject of
frequent police harassments. Many of them even before
proven guilty, die in police custody every year with no
one to question the law.
This project is an attempt to document the socio-
economic and educational crisis in these communities.
The photographs of tribe children as MUGSHOTS should
serve as an aid to understand the lack of sense of
identity among these tribes which as humans, is our birth
right.
 project 03
Forgotten Fairytales
A barefoot walk on Gandhi’s Dandi March route (390kms approx)
while exploring the hidden stories and incidents
 project 04

Memento Mori
exploring the concept of death
in various cultural perspectives
It’s a live project that I initiated taking the
inspiration from likes of Damien Hirst , Joel
Peter Within etc.
Being an Indian, it provides me tan opportunity
to explore and understand the meaning of death
in various indian cultures and religions.
I am trying to create a body of work that can
showcase such diverse meaning, beliefs and
perspectives on death through photography.
 project 04

Mapplethorpe
what
exploring the style and
visual ideologies of
Robert Mapplethorpe
 project 05
Reflections of million distorted thoughts
a collaborative project where artist explored the idea of body portraits
along with brain scans of recitals of old diary pages,
sharing of different emotions he went through that year
One Rupee Booklets
initiated ‘one rupee booklet’ project
at campus for photographers to share
their projects with community.
exploring alternative dark room methods like
Cyanotype, Albumen prints, Salt prints etc.
That’s all folks. portfolio: Ishaan Dixit
mailbox.ishaan@gmail.com