How Photographing My Seniors’ Work Turned Into New Friendships

Published On:

May 17, 2025

Tags:

Royal College of Art, Graduate Show, Photogrpahy, Contemporary Art

Category:

The act of photographing the show became a method of learning and belonging. Encounters with artists, spontaneous portraits, and long conversations made the event more than a display. It became a collective memory. The structure of the RCA program often isolates students across cohorts. The show disrupted that.

When I joined RCA I wanted to know what my seniors were doing and what my juniors would do. I rarely got to interact with them. The one-year course structure makes this nearly impossible. It isolates. It creates temporal silos. It should be changed. A two-year course is necessary. Not for curriculum. For continuity. To see and be seen across years. To exist with both past and future.

Photographing the graduate show gave me that continuity. I wasn’t just taking photos. I was meeting people. Seeing how they think. Noticing how they present their work. It let me inhabit the space more fully.

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I met Ekta Bagri from Kolkata. We took photos. We caught up again in India. That movement from RCA to Kolkata created a loop I didn’t expect. I met Nili Malik. She used those photographs for her portfolio. That made the work functional. It wasn’t art documentation. It was professional support. It mattered to her.

I met Iris. She came with her mother Mary. Mary is a cultural blogger and gallery regular. She shares gallery schedules and takes her daughter to shows. I took photographs of Iris engaging with the space. That moment anchored something. Later I started gallery-hopping with Mary. She showed me places I wouldn't have discovered on my own. Her method was different. Fast. List-based. I realized I prefer to move slower. Observe more. Look at spatial relationships.

That’s how I photograph exhibitions. Not isolated portraits. Layers. A person in relation to an artwork. The artwork in relation to the space. The space in relation to the rest of the show. That interconnectedness is the real content. Not individual works. The space is curated for a reason.

After the show I went with Donna for Chinese hotpot. That dinner was one of the best days of RCA. Quiet joy. Grounded memory.

Neha's performance with red pillows stood out. It dealt with anger and body shame. Minimal but powerful. Vicky's project on newspapers and geographic location was sharp. Each project brought in something I couldn’t have made myself. That’s the point. Learning by seeing. Expanding by witnessing.

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Learnings

Interaction across cohorts is necessary for real growth.
The one-year course format isolates and limits that growth.

The curated structure of an exhibition is the exhibtion in itsef.
The placement of the works is as important as the works themselves.
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Learning happens when you let go of your expectations and allow yourself to embrace new possibilties. Some of the works that I came across, were so weirdly mindblowing, that I had to ask myself, Omg! is that a masters project of someone in RCA! Crazy!

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