Gujarati boys and girls in the latest Hindi soap chic at a matrimonial convention centre; a sad and lonely Gujarati man in the opulent home of his son, a motel chain owner; a Christie’s auction of Indian contemporary art; an NRI home where a Ganesh Pyne Durga and a collection of crystal and porcelain gondola are prominently juxtaposed; a debutante gets ready for her arangettam; Silicon Valley boys settle down for the sacred thread ceremony in a mall at 5am; an African American looks lovingly at his wife in a salwar-kameez as he clicks her.

For Gauri Gill from Delhi, such a collage of Technicolor photographic images represents “The Americans”, encountered on a journey she undertook with a banker cousin that started at North Carolina and ended in New Orleans. A scholarship from Stanford University had made this project on the Indian diaspora possible. Now she teaches photography part-time at American School. She won the Mother Jone’s Award in 2002. The 1970-born Gill, trained at New School, New York, is holding her first one-person exhibition at Bose Pacia Kolkata gallery on Park Street. She tells t2 that these Americans carry a little India in their head, which sets them apart.

Did you take these photographs as an outsider?

I clearly belonged in both camps. Some part of me was there. Maybe the whole of me. I could have ended up like many of my friends. I can see its pull… its seduction. So much of my family is involved. On the one hand they are clearly American… there is a dilemma. Even in India you don’t escape that. The title of the exhibition “The Americans” is a reference to a book by the Swiss photographer, Robert Frank, who had photographed the Depression. This is my answer to him — brown or desi. Why are they different from white Americans?

The matrimonial conventions must be amazing...

Yes, couples are speed dating at these conventions, yet all of them belong exclusively to the Patidar Samaj. They are conservative — they don’t want to marry outside their community. There is ghettoisation — some separation from mainstream. Nothing to do with class or affluence. The photographs I have taken are up to the third generation. What will happen to the fourth generation? How will the story continue?

There were heartbreaking stories. There was a real-life Mississippi Masala couple — Rajesh and Donnie Speer of Birmingham Alabama. Rajesh was from a remote village. She accidentally cut her hand and her uncle offered to get her treated in America. She studied pharmacy. She married the most handsome boy in school, a black. Twenty years on, he developed a disability. She looked after his family. Her family had disowned her. She is as far out in the frontier as can be. She didn’t cut her hair and wears a salwar-kameez and that itself is a political act.

How did you start taking photographs?

I studied painting and applied art at the Delhi College of Art. Photography was a subsidiary. I loved it. It took me out into the world. In a sense, painting did not. In 1993, there was no place where one could be trained. I went to Tribeni Kala Sangam and learnt making black and white prints. I shoot in black and white and use film. But for this I used colour film. I need to get the light — green light of fluorescent tubes — the texture of linoleum floors and carpets. Which is odd. To foreigners, colours in India are much more exciting.

What camera do you use?

A Leica or a Nikon. The film is Portra NC (stands for natural colour) which desaturates colour.

Are your photographs selling?

For the first two to three years, I was prepared for my photographs not selling. But my series on urban landscapes sold. There is a market. But a lot of people don’t understand. There are few critics. Museums don’t buy them. There is no support from public institutions. A whole culture needs to come up. Only then will the market be meaningful.

Soumitra Das