For me, photography works at three levels: the literal, the aesthetic and the spiritual. Sometimes life does not have to be photographed according to reality, instead, why not explore the depths of the mind and soul and reach for something deeper than the reality that plagues us and traps us daily? I want my imagery to move beyond the realm of photography, one that mixes painterly qualities with surrealism and fantasy.  I explore the limits of analog photography to express my particular world where aspects such as dreams, nature, memory and identity are present in my images.

It is this painterly quality that I emulate, such as the use of brush strokes over my photographs, that I think gives a unique touch. Certainly, they are all staged and planned, but they all hold some sort of dramatized emotion that resonates with the viewer. The lack of sharpness meshed with my visual narratives that always seem connected to memory, or like fragmented dreams.

My work is the result of engaging two related art forms: photography and printmaking. Both are about image making and both involve time. I print on water color paper with a single negative using potassium dichromate, gum Arabic, and ground earth minerals for pigmentation. Gum printing offers to me a highly expressive, personal medium for reproducing photographic moments into one-of-a-kind works of art which renders photographs a haunting beauty as well as depth of surface character that is uncommon in the world of photography.

The sights and sounds of a tranquil Bengali village are strongly interlaced with memories of my childhood. Heavily tainted by the intimacy of those surroundings, this first set of Gum prints is an ode to that lost, wide-eyed innocence.

Swapan Nayak