The photographer says he will use the ₹12 lakh grant to develop his work and present at Les Rencontres d’Arles in 2022
Purushothaman Sathish Kumar’s work is predominantly colour photographs, though he has shot a few black and whites. One could say he follows the old style of ‘slow photography’ — taking the time to document his lived reality in a semi auto-biographical style. Some of his early frames are even shot on film and have that retro, grainy quality that has almost vanished in our age of digital, Instagram-able, immediate photo life.
“I work slowly, recording my life, moving around my city of Kanchipuram. The photographs ‘happen’ and I am there as a witness,” says Kumar, who recently won the Serendipity Arles Grant 2020, a new award and South Asia’s largest grant for lens-based practitioners. His award of ₹12 lakh will go towards developing his work and a final presentation at Les Rencontres d’Arles, the annual photography festival in…