CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/22/2019

We can't get enough of Mahesh Shantaram's 'Matrimania'

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?'"