How photographer Olivier Culmann captured the 'Indian man' without shooting any Indian men

For his project, The Others, French photographer Olivier Culmann found the perfect model: himself.

However, his photographs are far from being self-portraits. With the help of heavy make-up, wigs and various other props, Culmann recreated himself in many avatars seen on the streets of Indian cities – a taxi driver, a Sikh man, a government official, a sadhu, a khaki-clad policeman (or three), an aspiring Bollywood actor etc. The pictures are part of a portrait series through which he attempts to define the individual identities of Indian men and the idea of self-image.

"It was not because I wouldn’t be able to do it with some 'real people' that I decided to use myself as material," said Culmann. "It was rather to question the photographic medium, its practices and the notion of representation."

Culmann said that like most photographers, he usually visits other countries and returns with pictures of its people. But this time, he decided it was time to experiment.

"For this project, I decided to reverse the process: I came to live in India, I adopted a practice that was not mine and I came back home without any pictures of Indian people," he said. "By reproducing on myself the appearance of the people, I have brought back only what I could see and catch of Indian society. But, in a way, isn’t it what photographers always do?"

Currently on display at the Nicéphore Niépce museum in France, The Others was exhibited at the Delhi Photo Festival in November. A 192-page book on the project, also titled The Others, was published last year.

Immersive experience

Culmann, who started his career as a photographer in 1992, has been a member of the French collective of photographers, Tendance Floue, since 1996. “I am mostly coming from a background of traditional photojournalism, like Magnum Photos agency (an international collective of photographers co-founded by legendary French photographer Henri-Cartier Bresson) for example," he said. "But little by little, I moved to other fields. I appreciate this medium for its subjectivity. Photography never gives a real image of the world; it is always a proposition of a particular vision on reality. And that’s what I appreciate every time I discover a new photographical work: the singular subjective vision of someone."

The 45-year-old said his aim was to focus on the "standard people" who seemingly possess no "special quality" and remain mostly ignored by photographers. In The Others, the fair-skinned, light-eyed Frenchman uses his own image as a canvas to explore the identity of ordinary Indian men. It sometimes involved darkening his skin and often growing a moustache or a beard.

“Wherever I go, the vernacular, commercial or amateur photography of the place always interests me: neighbourhood studios, family albums, wedding pictures, advertising photography. In my opinion, these say much more of our time and societies," he said. "If some people in the future want to understand our actual era, they might understand a lot more by looking at such pictures rather than documentary photography or photojournalistic works."

Culmann has travelled all over India and even lived in Kerala for a few months in 2005 while working on a project, Watching TV, where he photographed people from various countries in the all-immersing act of watching television. “During my stay those days, on the side of my project, I visited some photo studios to see how they work here and also how they were using digital technologies and creating with them. When I came back to Delhi, I decided to explore these practices more deeply,” he said.

He began shooting for The Others in 2009 and continued over the next three years or so.

Phased approach

The photo studio for the project was a character in itself. It evolved from painted backdrops –ranging from simple patterns to landscapes – perfect for family portraits with a difference, or for prospective brides seeking a demure matrimonial shot.

In the digital age, these backgrounds are computer-generated and all that is required is a shot of a person's head, which can then be pasted on to any body or scenario.

The project consisted of four stages. In the first phase, Culmann visited the various neighbourhood studios in cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Puducherry, and shot traditional portraits there. "In a way, in Phase 1, we are in a 'real' world as those studios exist for real," he said. In phase two, he altered the portraits using digital tools. One picture shows Culmann's face pasted on to the head of mustachioed man wearing a kurta pyjama. In the background is a sari-clad woman sitting on a crescent moon.

The third phase saw the portraits recomposed and digitally colourised based on photo fragments. It is common practice to send old pictures, disintegrating from age, of a deceased member of the family to photo studios to be restored. In keeping with this tradition, Culmann gave various retouching labs half-torn photos and asked them to reconstitute the pictures as they visualised it.

For the fourth phase, Culmann asked a painter to reproduce some of the portraits shot in black and white "using different styles, generally inspired by the strong tradition of painted film posters." As was also the case in phase three, the painter was given the freedom to choose any colour palette and background to reproduce the images.

"I am very interested by the relation between pictures and reality, as well as the idea of representation," he said. "These pictures question the way in which social status could be elaborated through the construction of self-image. I don’t want to affirm, judge or prove anything through my work, but I like it when it causes the public to react. More than anything else, I like my work to make the people looking at it question themselves."

Mirror effect

He noticed that most people didn't immediately comprehend the image in front of them. "They usually have a first look at the pictures, thinking that they are looking at regular neighbourhood studios photographs. But then they realise that there is only one person behind all these characters and understand that what they are seeing is not what it seems like," he added.

The pictures are almost paradoxical in nature. The characters recreated in the series are as interesting as they are ordinary. The faces are familiar and alien at the same time. But through these, Culmann manages to tap into the various elements that contribute to the identity of the Indian male: religion, caste, class, aspirations, dress codes and social conventions. "I think that because the pictures use a regular and known aesthetic, it makes them accessible to everyone. I guess that a majority of people could recognise themselves in some kind of mirror effect," he said.

Culmann also related incidents where he would step out dressed as some character for the project. He said, "Though they instantly saw that I was a stranger and that it was not my real identity, I felt more or less respect in their attitude depending on the character I incarnated."

Culmann believes that photography is rich and interesting in India and that Indians like being photographed. According to him, there is a family of sorts of photographers around the world who share similar photographical cultures. "In contrast, India has a 'popular' culture of image which is very rich and I would say with no limit in term of creation. I think that this photography, even with the influences from abroad, is very typical of India and couldn’t be found somewhere else," he said.