Photography at the Edges of Representation: Rethinking Photographs of Rural India

Abstract

The photographic engagements Binu Bhaskar and Arunkumar H.G intersect with the thick visual record of rural India; however, they recode the tactics of many journalistic, ethnological, or sociological antecedents. In on drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s theory of agonistic art practices, this study considers how Bhaskar’s and Arunkumar’s photographs generate a dynamic space of interaction through which accepted beliefs about rural life may be interrogated and new associations may be cultivated. Their carefully constructed portraits encourage an active visual engagement with the identity of the rural worker and although their work plays with the visual idioms of documentary photography any trace of utility is driven asunder by their production, presentation, and reception as art objects. As such, their work positions the photograph not as evidence of toil but rather as an agent in a bid to rethink the spaces of rural life and the narrowly defined productive function of its occupants.