About Sujata Setia - Award-Winning Family Portrait Photographer

Our newest tutor Sujata Setia is a UK based, multi-award winning family and children photographer. She has achieved immense international recognition including winning the BJP’s Female in Focus Award, gaining 1st place in the International Photography Awards and being published in Forbes and Vanity Fair, to name but a few. We caught up with her to tell you a little bit more about herself and her photography journey.

10 Questions With Sujata Setia

Your background was initially in television and radio journalism- what sparked the change in career? Tell us a little bit about how you got into photography.

“It was by chance. I am not formally trained in the language of photography. However, for as long as I remember, art has been my anchor. I was diagnosed with clinical depression in 2010, a year following my move to the UK from India. In late 2013, following the birth of my daughter and the simultaneous deterioration of my mother’s health, I found my existence suspended within a liminal space… that between grief and joy, dying and birthing. Taking photos of my newborn child then became a means of active forgetfulness. So, in that sense, my practice is autobiographical in nature.

I started out as a family photographer in 2014. I would say I was primarily making images of my curiosities back then. I was curious about what a perfect childhood devoid of abuse, trauma and coercion would look like. So, I made works that were almost tyrannical in their depiction of superbness, an imaginary utopia. Losing my mother in 2019 however, finally forced me to see my inner landscape as a site of struggle and as a natural extension to that, study narratives from the margins that have for long been unseen and unarchived.”

What are your influences when you create photography? Are there any other artists or photographers who have influenced your style or approach?

“My greatest influences have always emanated from a personal context. My relationship with photography has been that of identifying my strongest emotions and then finding a correlation; a representation for them in the world.”

What is your creative process like?

“I am always dreaming of ideas, thoughts, ways, and scenarios in which I can say what I want to say through photography. But the problem that I have, which is much like that of all other artists, is that I am very bad at implementing those ideas. Well initially I used to be. But then I started writing down my ideas; I have a yellow diary. That is my most precious treasure, I write all my ideas in it whenever they come; I make sure to write them down. That’s the first step.

Like I said, my ideas always are born from a personal place. From my own lived experiences. So, the pain which is deepest and strongest inside me, that becomes the foundation for my photographic idea. Like when I had to find closure to the passing of my grandmother, I came up with the concept of gifting photographs to other grandparents with their grandchildren.

Whatever I do though, each year I work on a personal photographic project that has nothing to do with my client work. That becomes my anchor. Whenever I have nothing else to do, I go back to my project and create something around it. And then of course it’s just about reaching out to the right models for that photoshoot and taking the pictures.”

How do you navigate the balance between commercial work and personal projects in your career?

“I’ve just always focused on my personal work to be very honest, and somehow the client work has come through that. I think in your profession if your passion becoming your driving force then money follows somehow. I have always believed that. I don’t run after client work. I just make my personal work and keep posting it. You just have to be consistent with putting your work out there. That’s very important and then if your work is coming from a really strong personal place and it’s filled with passion and meaning and has a narrative that has a universal appeal, then believe me, commercial work will follow.”

old couple with dog and baby — © Sujata Setia

Your first series, “Changing the Conversation” is truly moving, what was your initial inspiration for this series?

“I created that work for my daughter. She’s nearly eleven now but when I started that series, she was eight. And she was at that stage in her life where her opinions and world views were being formed. She was seeing herself as the brown girl with the dark skin in her group of friends at school. You know that age where you start noticing your own differences and start questioning them.

I have been through that. I have always been a very short person growing up in India where the standard of feminine beauty is so markedly cast out that you cannot be an inch more or less than that standard or else you will be “ugly.” So, I was an ugly child all along, you know. I just wanted to make sure my daughter doesn’t grow with that binary definition of beauty. Beauty is just so, so much more than [that]. Beauty is inclusive. Beauty is unique. Beauty is in differences. That’s what inspired me to create this series.”

Was there a particularly stand out memory of the creation of this series?

“Every single session done as part of this series was memorable. I learned and continue to learn so much. It has helped break down my own preconceptions about the world and how and what it should be like.”

What was your most challenging moment during the creation of this series?

“The first day of reaching out to the first participant. That first step in the direction of implementation from the conception stage was by far the most challenging. To muster the courage to try and do something entirely different from all my other body of work. I had no clue how the pictures would look. What am I trying to say? Will the person I am reaching out to reply to me as well or not? I was so damn scared.”

woman holding a photo of her younger self — © Sujata Setia

Did you ever worry about portraying these sitters due to the biases attached to them? How did you tackle the ethics of this project?

“It was hard. It continues to be hard. I had a million questions in my mind, and I had no one to help me with the answers. I was taking a huge chance, and I was also dragging someone with me into it. My worry was that I am trying to talk about differences and that is not “normal” in photography. Photographers capture “beauty” in the standard definition of that word. But my worry was will I be able to say what I want to say in the right manner. Will I also be able to do it in a collaborative way making sure the person whose story is being narrated has 100 percent agency to decide how their narrative should be showcased? And will I be able keep my personal agendas and vanity out of this project? Because this work is not about me. It is about them, the “other.” So, I always apologised. I stayed humble. I stayed a student, a learner, all along the making of this series. I left my ego and my hunger for more Instagram post likes and more personal recognition out of the door when I went in to meet the participants for this series. I became a medium through which they tell their story in their own way.”

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How do you stay motivated and continue to evolve in your practice?

“I just don’t know how to be anything else other than be this person who continues to create. My work is changing every single day, but I think evolving is the only way I know to exist.”

mother with sons under a tree — © Sujata Setia

Have you ever found it challenging to develop a relationship between yourself and your sitter? If so, how did you overcome this, and what advice would you give to beginner portrait photographers?

“Never. I just go in with my guard down. I stay vulnerable. I don’t judge. I don’t expect. I just ask and allow for them to talk for as long as they want to. People forget to ask questions. As humans we are natural talkers. Everyone has so much to say, we are so desperate to talk that we forget to be a listener. To my fellow portrait photographers, if I have any advice at all to give then it’s just this… be a listener.”

If you could give yourself from ten years ago one piece of advice, what would it be?

“Great question, I think it would be to take more risks [and] invest more back into my business. I was just so happy to bring money on the table back then and I was a new mother, I wanted to give my daughter experiences and in that, I chose to not invest back in the business. That’s important. While we are artists, we must learn to also be shrewd businesspeople. Artists are eccentric beings, and so is our industry. Work is never consistent so it’s important to make sure we are making judicious business decisions in good times to protect ourselves from fair-weather days.”

If you’re looking to take your family portraiture to the next level and learn about everything that comes with being a professional family portrait photographer, check out the Fine Art Family Portraiture Course.

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The School of Photography14 March 2024Sony World Photography Awards 2021Comment