Born in 1977, Mahesh Shantaram lived abroad for many years. After studying at the Spéos School of Photography in Paris, he returned to his home city of Bangalore, in the state of Karnataka, and in 2006 decided to specialise in the flourishing field of wedding photography. As can be seen in the series Matrimania, on show here, he draws on his professional work for more personal projects.
The wedding photograph holds up a mirror to Indian society, for better and for worse. After an unsuccessful attempt at going freelance, Mahesh Shantaram realised that weddings were the surest way to live off his skills, even if the job commands little respect: “In India,” he says, “wedding photographers are considered unrefined, naïve and unintelligent.” Despite family pressure he went ahead, determined to inject new life into the genre. And now his approach – subjective but honest, witty and human – has made him one of his country’s most esteemed professionals. “Weddings are a space-time zone where people are out to impress but can behave in the most horrendous ways. At a wedding, society’s strengths and weaknesses are laid bare. In India a wedding ceremony is taken extremely seriously for the impact it can have.
It has to impress the thousands of guests, who waste no time in pegging the family’s social status.” Fascinated by these short-lived scenes, Mahesh Shantaram approaches them in a documentary spirit. The decors that loom so large in Matrimania are highly revelatory of the urge to show off and of the money people are ready to spend on them. In these images close attention to detail highlights “my country’s penchant for order and chaos, for colour and noise, together with a very particular sense of design and ‘good taste’ — or of the latter’s absence.”
Olivier Culmann, curator
Text from the catalogue-book “Photoquai”, co-edited by Musée du Quai Branly- Actes-Sud
