Hot Shots : Rafil Kroll-Zaidi
Artist Statement
In 2003–2004, I undertook a photo essay on the Bollywood film industry, seeking to create images that would be enlivened by the color and iconography of mainstream Indian cinema and whose framing, juxtapositions, and lighting would remove the actors and sets from their contexts and suggest narratives drastically different from those of the films themselves. At the same time, I conducted an intensive large-format study of Bombay landscapes; these images, by evoking a specifically cinematic sense of drama in the city itself, resonate with and enrich the Bollywood material.
Biography
Rafil Kroll-Zaidi was born in India and raised in that country and in Texas. He was educated at Princeton University, where he majored in comparative literature and pursued a practical and critical course of study in the visual arts. He lives in New York City and works at Harper's Magazine.