Le Journal Interviews, News

Siddhartha Tawadey was born in Calcutta, India and studied art and photography at St Martin’s School of Design and City University in London. Works from the artist’s series Decadence of the Abandoned highlight the abject beauty of possessions that have been discarded. The over-abundance of consumer goods reveals a global culture of refuse within an urban context.

Walk us through your journey into the art world and how you chose photography as your medium.
Photography literally translates into painting with light. Photography has always been the most democratic of all art forms. I was drawn to photography due to its ability to tell stories within frames. Photography can project the vernacular both in terms of situations and spaces in an artistic form and draw out more meaningful and deeper essences of the space. My work revolves around building a conceptual space with photographic images that allows the viewer to weave their own thoughts and perceptions and project it onto the images, in turn, creating a personal mind space to contemplate the images.

What draws you to a particular subject? For example, the Sans Souci series was about forgotten and neglected spaces. Do you find yourself drawn to some issues more than others?
I get drawn to spaces that have stories to tell. I attempt to give these spaces a voice through my images.

What is your view on social media platforms such as Instagram, how do you think they have changed photography?
The use of Instagram has made photography accessible but yet the depth of the image has suffered in its immediacy to capture the moment.