Published by Tara Books
ISBN 9789383145102

Artisan Camera
Studio Photography from Central India

SURESH PUNJABI  & CHRISTOPHER PINNEY

Artisan Camera is a testimony to an era of hands-on studio photography, when physical materials combined with the photographer’s artistry to shape the final image. 

This book features work from Studio Suhag in Nagda, a small town in central India. Suresh Punjabi–the studio’s proprietor and photographer–showcases some of his vintage photographs from the 1970s and 1980s. They evoke a world where the studio portrait was an important memento, capturing not just the ‘real’ subject, but also a persona made over to meet the camera’s eye. A richly argued essay by visual anthropologist Christopher Pinney–author of Camera Indica–places Punjabi’s work in the context of a visual history.