Waswo X. Waswo

Waswo X. Waswo (B. 1953 Milwaukee, United States, lives and works in Rajasthan, India) is an American photographer and writer best known for his hand-painted black and white photographs of people from the streets of Rajasthan, shot against dramatic cloth backgrounds in his village studio.

Collaborating with a variety of traditional miniaturists, his paintings express the experience of being an outsider; flipping perspectives and causing the viewer to question the space that separates the insider from the interloper. His experience as an American living in India fosters work where the past and the present, history and contemporary identities; the very idea of belonging, becomes both playfully tangential and seriously relevant. Waswo poetically interprets narratives into rich and symbolic visuals with the help of his miniaturist team. These collaborations blend genres and play intelligently on themes from history and colonialism interwoven with contemporary themes in a style that is reminiscent of Mughal and Mewari traditional painting.