Dayanita Singh was born in New Delhi in 1961 and studied at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad and the International Center of Photography in New York. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; the Art Institute of Chicago; Hayward Gallery, London; the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. In 2013 she represented Germany at the Venice Biennale. Bookmaking is central to Singh's practice. Her books with Steidl include Privacy (2004), Chairs (2005), Go Away Closer (2007), Sent a Letter (2007), Dream Villa (2010), File Room (2013), Museum of Chance (2014), Museum Bhavan (2017)-Book of the Year at the 2017 Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards and winner of the 2018 ICP Infinity Award for Artist's Book-and Zakir Hussain Maquette (2019). Singh is the 2022 Hasselblad Award recipient.
"The black-and-white photographs show shelves stacked with cloth-wrapped bundles of documents, all emblematic of a desire to organize the past and keep it accessible.--William Meyers ""Wall Street Journal"" The camera feasts on an endless tension between organization and disarray: --Mark Feeney ""Boston Globe"" Singh has paved new ways for engaging with photography, be it through humanist portraiture, or her innovative display structures and book objects which recast traditional notions of the museum and publishing.-- ""L'Oeil de la Photographie"""