RANDHIR SINGH

Bio

Born 1976 in New Delhi, Randhir Singh received his Bachelor of Architecture and Bachelor of Science degrees from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York in 1999. He spent fifteen years working as an architect in New York while studying photography at the International Center of Photography. In 2013, he moved to New Delhi to develop his photographic practice focussing on architecture and urbanism. He is currently based in Barcelona.

Singh is currently working on a series of photography based books exploring modern architecture. Titled Modern South Asia, this series features in depth visual essays on buildings of historic importance along with  newly commissioned writing and drawings. The first book in the Modern South Asia series is an exploration of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore by the Pritzker Prize winning architect, Balkrishna V. Doshi. This will be followed by titles exploring buildings by Charles Correa, Kuldip Singh, Mahendra Raj, Achyut Kanvinde and Joseph Stein to name a few.

His work was exhibited in 2022 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as a part of The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947-1985. Singh was commissioned to produce a substantial portfolio of photographs on modern architecture in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka providing a contemporary perspective on a “culture of modern architecture” at a time of “significant progressive societal transformation”. The full portfolio of photographs are also included in the scholarly catalogue accompanying the exhibition. A selection of those photographs were acquired by MoMA for their permanent collection.

Exhibited at Photoink in 2020 and at Arthshila Ahmedabad in 2022, IIT Delhi: A Modernist Case Study was a two person show, and subsequent publication, with the late Madan Mahatta exploring the role of the photographer in relationship to architecture, history and time. The modernist site of the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi was viewed through two vantage points six decades apart drawing in issues of inhabitation and architectural materiality. 

Singh has collaborated with the artist, Seher Shah on numerous projects combining photography, architecture and drawing. Their recent project, Studies in Form, is a series of cyanotype prints that builds on these overlaps to further an ongoing interest into concepts of architectural scale and sculptural intent. This project was included in the exhibition, Bearing Points at the Dhaka Art Summit (2018), the Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (2019) and the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah (2022).

For close to a decade, Singh has been photographing government housing colonies in Delhi. This on-going project, CPWD explores socialist housing, typologies, modernism and national identity. Photographs from CPWD were included in the exhibition, When is Space? at Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur (2018).

In 2016, Singh’s series exploring industrial architecture and the urban landscape, Water Towers, was shown at the Pondy Photo Festival. Photographed in portrait format, his project sought to connect the monumental, and often decorative, water towers to the prosaic housing colonies and parks around them. This project was included in the exhibition, Body Building at the Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai (2019). Continuing his interest in the urban landscape, his photographs examining waterways and hydraulic architecture were included in the publication and exhibition, Yamuna River Project (2017). The Yamuna River Project book was awarded the Deutsches Architekturmuseum Architecture Book award for 2018.