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The Studio, as a Way of Being
Photographer Rohit Chawla’s Portrait of an Artist invites us into the artist’s studio, not as a place of pure solitude, but as the space where creativity, identity, and everyday life quietly converge
“Rather than ask what artists are ‘really like’ we should ask what are the social conventions for what it is to be an artist?” — W. Ray Crozier
The artist’s studio has long held a certain mystique. It is often imagined as a private, almost sacred space removed from the noise of the world, where ideas take shape in silence. And yet, much like the figure of the artist itself, the studio is not as untouched or as singular as it appears. It is shaped by history, by habit, by personality, and by the ways in which we have come to imagine creative life.
As someone trained in the history of the art market, it is difficult to look at the studio without also thinking about how the image of the artist has been constructed over time. We tend to think of artists in extremes—either eccentric and withdrawn, or sharply attuned to the demands of the market. But these identities are rarely innate. They have been built layer upon layer and circulated through stories, images, and institutions that have, over time, shaped what we expect an artist to be.
A Figure Imagined Over Time
Art historian Sarah Burns, in her book Inventing the Modern Artist; Art and Culture in Gilded Age America, traces how this image took form in the late nineteenth century. With the rise of illustrated magazines and mass publishing, artists began to appear more frequently in the public eye, not just through their work, but through narratives about their lives, their personalities, and most importantly, their spaces. The artist, Burns suggests, became a figure of fascination precisely because of their contradictions: at once sensitive and self-contained, yet worldly and engaged; deeply introspective, yet very much part of modern life.
Magazines and newspapers of the time were filled with what Burns describes as “contradictory reports and interpretations of what artists were seen and thought to be.” And yet, through repetition, these contradictions began to settle into something recognizable. A shared image of the artist that audiences could relate to. As Burns writes, “Through frequent appearances in the new mass-marketed, heavily illustrated journals… the American artist gained a wider public than before,” becoming, in many ways, a public, media-generated figure. Artists, in turn, learned to shape how they were seen, participating in this construction of their own identity.
Within this evolving image, the studio began to take on a special significance. It was no longer just a place where art was made, but a space that could be described, imagined, and even staged. It offered a glimpse—however partial—into the artist’s world, allowing viewers to connect the work to the life behind it. If the artist was being constructed through images and text, the studio became one of the most enduring settings through which that construction could be grounded.
Entering the Studio
It is against this longer history that Rohit Chawla’s Portrait of an Artist unfolds. If Burns writes about the rise of the artist through print, Chawla brings us into a more contemporary moment, where photography continues this work of shaping perception. His book invites us into the studios of some of India’s most significant artists, but what it reveals is not a single, unified idea of the studio. Instead, it offers a series of distinct, deeply personal environments, each reflecting a different way of living with art.
Kishore Singh describes the studio as “simultaneously sanctuary and battleground… refuge and prison” , and this sense of duality runs through the book. Some studios are quiet and spare, others dense with objects and memory. Some are extensions of the home, while others insist on separation. What becomes clear is that the studio is never just a room. It is a space shaped by rhythm, by ritual, and by the particular habits of looking, thinking, and making that define each artist’s practice.
Photography as the ‘Craft’ of Looking
Chawla’s photographs mirror this sensibility, but they also introduce another layer: photography itself as a form of craft. His decision to work without assistants or elaborate lighting is not merely an aesthetic choice, but a technical discipline that relies on the careful reading of available light, on timing, on proximity, and on restraint. “I began to photograph ‘alone’: no assistants, no lights, no ceremony,” he writes, choosing instead to rely on “the available light of the moment.” To photograph a studio is not simply to document it but to interpret it as well. The fall of light across a wall, the placement of objects within a frame, the distance maintained between photographer and subject are all decisions that shape how the space is understood.
At the same time, there is a philosophical dimension to this practice. Chawla speaks of allowing something to “slip through” in those brief moments with his subjects, of waiting for the image to reveal itself rather than imposing it. “Portraiture, to me, is not about likeness,” he reflects,“it’s about the ‘punctum’… the unscripted tremor that escapes the curated self.” In this sense, photography becomes less about capturing a definitive likeness and more about registering a presence that’s open-ended. The portrait, like the studio itself, resists closure.
Raghu Rai’s reflections echo this intertwining of technique and intuition. “I meet my god through my camera,” he says, describing photography as both discipline and devotion. For him, the act of making an image requires complete attentiveness and a readiness that is as much physical as it is intuitive. The camera is not simply a tool, but an extension of perception, one that demands both control and surrender. The studio, in this sense, is not confined to walls; it becomes a way of seeing.
Ways of Working, Ways of Living
For Anish Kapoor, the studio takes on a different meaning. In a life that moves between cities and continents, it becomes a point of anchoring. “This is the only place I belong—here in the studio. I don’t belong anywhere else”. What holds this space together is not location, but a daily engagement that gives shape to his work and, perhaps, to his sense of self.
Anjolie Ela Menon’s studio, by contrast, feels deeply rooted in its surroundings. After years of working within domestic spaces, she describes the quiet satisfaction of having a place of her own that acts as a refuge where she can close the door and begin. “It is my refuge, the place where the muse visits… when I lock myself in and sit in front of a blank canvas, waiting for inspiration”. And yet, this refuge is anything but isolated. Located within the Nizamuddin basti, her studio looks out onto a lively, ever-changing street. Festivals, conversations, children at play—all of it becomes part of the visual and emotional texture of her work.
Anju Dodiya’s practice introduces a more introspective dimension to the idea of the studio. Her work often draws from deeply personal imagery, where the body and the self are explored through layered, sometimes theatrical compositions. In this context, the studio becomes a private stage where internal narratives are worked through and where vulnerability can be held and transformed into form.
Mithu Sen’s approach unsettles the idea of the studio as fixed or contained. Known for her fluid movement across mediums and ideas, her practice resists easy categorization. The studio, in her case, is less about structure and more about possibility—a space that shifts, expands, and contracts depending on the demands of the work. It is not defined by walls, but by a certain openness to experimentation.
In the work of T. Venkanna, the studio remains closely tied to lived experience. His paintings, often rooted in rural and social realities, suggest a space that is deeply connected to the world outside it. Rather than retreating from everyday life, the studio becomes a place where that life is observed and reinterpreted into his canvases.
A Space that Shapes a Way of Being
Across these varied practices, the studio emerges not as a singular ideal, but as a reflection of how each artist chooses to live and work. It can be quiet or chaotic, enclosed or open, minimal or layered with memory. What connects these spaces is not their appearance, but their role in shaping the rhythm of making.
Chawla’s portraits capture this with a quiet precision that is both technical and intuitive. There is no attempt to dramatize or over-compose; instead, the images rely on a sensitivity to light, to stillness, and to the small, often overlooked details that define a space. In doing so, they remind us that photography, like painting or sculpture, is itself a practice of looking that requires patience, calibration, and an understanding of when to intervene and when to step back.
In the end, what Portrait of an Artist, by Mapin Publishing, offers is not access to some hidden truth behind the artist or the studio. Instead, it offers something more subtle: an awareness of how these spaces—and the images we make of them—are shaped. The studio is not just where art is made. It is where ways of seeing are formed, and where the artist, in all their complexity, comes quietly into view.
For Anish Kapoor, home is a very difficult concept, given his sojourns between London and Venice. The Studio is where he feels he truly belongs. Photo credit, Rohit Chawla/Mapin Publishing and KNMA
Shilpa Gupta's studio is full of boxes, labelled of things the world is leaving behind as detritus describes Chawla. Photo credit, Rohit Chawla/Mapin Publishing and KNMA
For Chawla, Navjot is the only artist he knows who splits her studios between the tribal heartland and the city where her work addresses issues of marxism, feminism and ecological concerns. Photo credit, Rohit Chawla/Mapin Publishing and KNMA
For 30 years Arpana Caur has practiced her art from her 3rd florr studio in the company of peafowl, parrots, a family of white owls and quarelling squirrels writes Chawla. Photo credit, Rohit Chawla/Mapin Publishing and KNMA
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