Peabody awards Gardner Fellowship to Singh

The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology has announced that Dayanita Singh of New Delhi, India, has been awarded the Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography. Born in 1961 in New Delhi, Singh studied visual communication at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad (India) and documentary photography at the International Center of Photography in New York. She has worked as a photojournalist for many international publications including Der Alltag, Fortune, Newsweek, The New Yorker, India Magazine, SZ Magazine, and Time. Her work has been exhibited throughout Europe, and in New Delhi, Boston, and New York, among other cities. Known for her black-and-white portraits depicting Indian society, Singh has published five books, including “Go Away Closer” in 2007.

Endowed by filmmaker and photographer Robert Gardner, founder and former director of the Harvard Film Archive, the fellowship is awarded to an established practitioner of the photographic arts whose work focuses on human society. The fellowship provides a stipend, plus additional funding for travel and equipment, allowing the recipient to spend a year pursuing a project of his or her choice, which will later form the basis of a book of photographs to be published by the Peabody Museum.

During the fellowship year, Singh will be photographing aspects of India that are “slipping through the cracks” — the people and industries that go unnoticed while the rest of the country rushes to keep pace with globalization and modernization.