| | | | Mahesh Shantaram: MatrimaniaText by Mahesh Shantaram, Gita Aravamudan.
 Indian weddings between pop and tradition“All that is great about a country and all that is wrong with it can be summarised by a single wedding,” says Indian photographer Mahesh Shantaram (born 1977). In his documentary work, he mostly studies the complex societal system of his home country. Working as a wedding photographer, he has had privileged access to a cross-section of celebrations of the Indian upper- and middle-class societies.
Young adults assume the role of princes and princesses in a Bollywood-like fantasy often choreographed by their parents. On the periphery, a multitude of workers entertain crowds, cater to thousands of guests, and keep the show going on for days.
Using images culled from over 150 weddings and created in the course of six years, Matrimania constructs a fictional narrative—an alternative wedding album—that depicts one long wedding night in India. Matrimania is a personal take on 21st-century India’s contradictions seen through the prism of its wedding culture.
"Wonderland," Chennai, TN (2010) is reproduced from 'Mahesh Shantaram: Matrimania.'PRAISE AND REVIEWSGuardian Tim Lewis Shantaram’s new book, Matrimania, is “an alternative wedding album”, one that features not only the bride and groom, but also guests and workers. Huck Sara Rosen In his work, Shantaram goes further than simply documenting the goings-on of each individual event. Rather, he uses weddings to explore the complexities of Indian society, using photography to expose the complex forces at play in act of matrimony. BBC: Culture Fiona Macdonald Mahesh Shantaram captured the shifts unfolding in Indian marriage celebrations. [He] sought out moments of humour that allowed reality to sneak through the polish. |
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| | FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/22/2019 Maybe you've been to a destination wedding in Oahu or a Star Wars themed bar mitzvah at the Pierre. But you haven't seen anything til you've gone behind-the-scenes at an over-the-top upper-class Indian wedding, where several thousand guests, bodyguards, fireworks, marching bands and live animals would not be unusual. Well, now you have your chance in Indian photojournalist (and wedding photographer) Mahesh Shantaram's fascinating Matrimania, reviewed this week in The Guardian. "The great Indian wedding, like the great Indian waistline, has bloated to keep up with great Indian aspirations," Shantaram writes. "A yuppie investment banker-type with a switched-on accent is trying on a tuxedo for the first time. This is momentous and must be captured by the official photographer, he believes. He does that action—how shall I put it? The equivalent of snapping fingers at a waiter in a restaurant—and snaps me out of my reverie of how I'm creating important work that will one day end up at the MoMA or some such. 'Take a picture,' he commands. I decline the invitation. 'You're a photographer, right? Then what's the problem?'" continue to blog | FORTHCOMING AND RECENT PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS |  | FRAENKEL GALLERYISBN: 9781881337232
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