In recent years, the practice of photography - that immensely creative form of "mechanical reproduction" - has become a mainstream consumer pastime with millions of images being produced and disseminated digitally every minute. While most images thus produced have been denied relevance as exhibition - worthy works of art, a number of visual artists are beginning to draw upon these visual domains, that is to say, the glossy advertisement photograph, the informal snapshot, the found photograph, the family album and other repositories of memory, as a conceptual point of departure for their work. Additionally, artists are also adopting visual strategies that show a profound influence of the photographic medium and its ancillary tools. This open embrace between painterly goals and the photographic reference and other forms of reproduction technology is a rather refreshing change from the cagey attitude of an earlier generation of artists who would take elaborate measures to deny their works' reliance on photography as an aid de memoir. The attempt to downplay their involvement with photography was often made in order to crystallize their identities as painters - for whom the modernist celebration of the painterly unique mark was of paramount importance.

The recent publication of Portrait of an Artist, the Diary of C. Raja Raja Varma, Raja Ravi Varma's brother has proved to be an eye opener for many1. The ghostly black and white apparitions of his models - photographed gesturing into empty space - only in order to re-appear in painted form as bearers of an altogether different meaning, has given contemporary viewers of his paintings a completely different perspective on his creative process. The realist exactitude achieved by him through his reliance on the photograph as a source of documentary reference has opened up an interesting space of enquiry vis-a-vis the relationship between photography and painting. While the history of this relationship over the last hundred years is rather blurry in India, the turn towards photography in the last decade or so has led to a full- scale acceptance of the practice within the rarified domains of 'Art'. In fact, photography has come to occupy a fairly large space in the creative output of many a former painter or sculptor. No longer seeing it as an adjunct practice in the service of their main work, many artists have begun to take creative liberties with a medium which was once seen as being too technical and prescriptive for any direct expression.

This, of course, has a lot to do with the relative ease with which photographs can be taken today. The miniaturization and user - friendliness of digital technology with additional features such as instant re - viewing, deletion, as well as ease of storage and retrieval, now allows users a set of possibilities that older technologies could not. Moreover, digital photography's complete compatibility with various image manipulation softwares, has given photograph - makers a sense of agency and control that perhaps 'straight' photography lacked.