This cop-turned-artist from Karnataka created his own photo studio to travel back in time with his mother

There were no cell phones back then and owning a camera was out of the question. Shiva’s dream of taking photos with his mother remained tucked away at the back of his mind for decades. Visiting other people’s homes, he felt a sting of sadness when he saw family pictures covering the walls. Finally, in 2017, the now 46-year-old (“just 46,” he emphasises) sought to remedy this lack of documentation by working on a photo performance series with his mother.

Currently exhibited at Gallery Sumukha in Bengaluru and curated by Joshua Muyiwa, No Longer A Memory combines the nostalgia of old-school studio-shot photo albums with the theatrics of folk plays performed in rural India. In one picture, Shiva and his mother don colourful suits and carry boxy TVs on their heads, harking back to when a young Shiva swore he’d steal the TV from the rich family in their village for her. In another photo, they pose as a cop duo on the hunt for fugitives. They are a mogra-clad Muslim bride and groom against a floral backdrop in one photo, and Shiva is dressed as Yamraj, the Hindu God of death, in another. While the series presents a social commentary—touching upon the secularism of Ramanagara, the village in which Shiva grew up (and of Sholay fame), the aspirational nature of a job in the police force, the television and Samsonite suitcase that were once symbols of elite status—it tackles these subjects with an endearing playfulness. There is joy and warmth in every photograph featuring the mother-son duo, an excitement at finally creating the photo album they always longed for.