Sadak – Hand painted street signs in India

Artist photographer and filmmaker Aradhana Seth’s photographic archive of hand-painted signs in India: a visual journey through the historical and economic changes in Indian society over the years.

Since the 1990s, India’s hand-painted signs – a defining feature of the country’s urban landscape – have been largely replaced by more technologically advanced media. Today, they survive in a vernacular culture quite distinct from large-scale digital productions. The work of sign painters constitutes a visual itinerary through the historical-economic changes of Indian society over the years; paintings that emerge in vivid shapes and colors and humanize the marked aesthetics of the subjects and objects of globalized capitalism.

The book presents part of artist Aradhana Seth’s photographic archive: a multitude of drawings on store shutters, doors, signs and walls of various places of interest and businesses.

Created over the last few decades, the images are divided into three thematic sections: commerce and services, culture, nature and landscape. The publication is complemented by biographies of Raza Abbas, Praveen Chauan, Prashant Janardhan Dalvi and Shakeel, some of the artists who created the photographed paintings; a critical text by Kajri Jain, lecturer in culture