Dayanita Singh collaborated with PARI in 2022 to institute the Dayanita Singh-PARI Documentary Photography Award. That went to M. Palani Kumar of the People’s Archive of Rural India.
This year's Dayanita Singh- PARI Documentary Photography award of Rs. 2 lakhs goes to another upcoming, talented photographer chosen by her: Aayna of the People’s Archive of Rural India.
Aayna came to photography through a personal route – as a way to keep alive in her memory realities that she would have otherwise liked to forget. She learned that what seemed like a tool of resilience-building at the innermost level could also be a political device used to tell the untold stories of many. A realisation that came to her when she encountered the works of Sebastião Salgado, Vivian Maier, Shankar Sarkar, Palani Kumar and others. That awareness was reinforced by working with PARI at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Her lens has captured very evocative photos of the sex workers of Kamathipura and the village migrants without healthcare support on the pavement during the Covid-19 pandemic. A total of about 23 photo stories by Aayna presents us with an astounding medley of characters living on the neglected corners of a metropolis – a Rajasthani migrant musician on the Mumbai local, city taxi drivers, gateway of India photographers, a donkey-milk seller, a Karnataka migrant dancing and whipping himself on Mumbai’s streets. The sensitivity and empathy with which she presents the rural in the urban in these stories cannot be matched by many.
