Kapil Das: Something So Clear
Kapil Das
Something So Clear is Kapil Das’ patient look behind the visual clichés and stereotypes that have come to define India. Consisting of a tight edit from thousands of photos taken over a decade, the book shows the spectrum of India through land- and streetscapes, portraits and everyday happenings, some as deceptively simple as a man carrying a mattress or a beetle resting on a leaf. Sequenced not chronologically or geographically but by intuition, humor and mood, Something So Clear is an archive of impressions that embraces the chaos of life and contains images that in Das’ words are “from a place but not of a place.” While trained as an ethnologist, Das casts aside a strictly analytical approach to capture ephemeral encounters in photos he deems “psychological portals” into his subjects’ (and his own) self. Serendipity not certainty guides Das and makes the title of this book delightfully ironic: “something so clear” is an alluring yet unreachable ideal.
Born in Dehra Dun in 1980, Kapil Das majored in English at the University of Delhi and has since worked as an ethnologist. In 2005 he co-founded the design consultancy Quicksand, based in Delhi and Bangalore, and in 2009 he founded the public arts initiative Blindboys, a forum to present photography through on- and offline platforms such as the improvised street exhibition “BlowUp Bombay” (2011). Das held his first solo exhibition “154 Neshvilla Road and Other Stories” at Photoink, New Delhi, in 2011.
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