Joe Paul Cyriac

Joe Paul Cyriac is a photographer whose works often originate as sculptures. Born and brought up in Trivandrum, he studied Economics at Mumbai University before moving to Dhaka to study Photography at the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute. His photographic works are experimental with interest in the tactile, dealing with notions of perception in two dimensional and three-dimensional worlds. Through this project, Joe intends to make a series of tricolour gum bichromate prints and sculptures titled The Order of Sorcery by appropriating images collected from panoramas of India uploaded to Google Street by its contributors.

The axis of the project revolves around concerns of interpersonal ethics and surveillance in the Internet era. In 2016, the Indian government rejected a proposal to roll out Google Street view, an app through which one can explore cities, tourist spots, hills and rivers using 360-degree panoramic and street-level imagery. It was believed that allowing such image-capturing may compromise India’s homeland security. But the app still contains a collection of user-contributed panoramic images which can be accessed by anyone.

In the context of Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, when many experiences have shifted online, Joe will use the Google Street app to undertake a virtual road trip across India. Images uploaded by contributors in Google Street sometimes have abstract black shapes - distortions occupying space within the 360-degree panoramas. Joe will collect these images and turn them into photographic prints using the 19th-century alternative photography process of tricolour gum bichromate printing. Scanned digital copies of the prints and documentation of the sculptures will be then used along with the findings of the ongoing research into the nature of images in the internet era and internet policies of the Indian state to prepare a performance lecture. This lecture is how the work will be presented online.

It is important for IFA to support this work that coincides two scopic regimes of surveillance – the first being the present technology of Google; the other – the 19th-century technology of photographic print that was also used for surveying landscapes. The outcome of the project will be the series of tricolour gum bichromate prints and a lecture-performance. The Grantee’s deliverables to IFA along with the final report will be the digital images sourced from Google Street, scanned images of the tricolour gum bichromate prints and sculptures, video recording of the lecture performance and photo documentation of the negatives and the tricolour gum bichromate printing process.

This grant is made possible under the special initiative 25x25, with support from lead donor Kshirsagar-Apte Foundation, and philanthropy partners, Titan Company Limited, Priya Paul, and Sethu Vaidyanathan.