“Photography takes itself too seriously,” says Olivier Culmann. “Too many photographers have a tragic view of the world. I’m convinced we can speak seriously about something with humour and irony.” That, says the Frenchman, is why he has chosen to produce a series about ordinary life in India – called The Others – without snapping a single local.

“I’m a little tired of this ‘I photograph people to give them a certain dignity’,” he says. “This so-called well-meaning westerner who goes to photograph poverty. That’s not my intention. All these people were part of my daily life in India; they’re people I was attached to.”

Over 20 years of travelling to and living in India, Culmann spotted certain looks in the streets time and time again – bureaucrats in sweater vests, throwback 70s stylings. Then he began reproducing their appearances – on himself. He calls the endeavour a “cultural inversion”.

Phase 2 of The Others: Olivier Culmann poses against the digital backdrops common in Indian portrait studios. Photograph: Olivier Culmann/Tendance Floue

He seems an improbable candidate for such a project: a fair-skinned grey-eyed 45-year-old. “Anything I could replicate authentically, I did,” he says. He bought or borrowed similar clothing to the men he impersonated, dyed his hair black, grew it out for some shots, shaved it off for others, grew a moustache. The only changes he made in post-production were the colour of his skin and eyes, for the sake of realism.

His images are not made to be controversial: they are not social critique, but a commentary on the power of illusions. He decided on his own one-man casting simply for ease: “I’m always available, always there when I need me,” he jokes. Though he insists that “the idea isn’t to make a joke or make fun… you can show humour and tenderness in tandem”.

He has attempted such a delicate balance before. In Une Vie de Poulet (A Chicken’s Life) he uses humorous, if sometimes uncomfortable, juxtapositions, equating agricultural poultry practices with military training. But it was his Faces series, in which Culmann visually transforms from the neck up – going from bowl cut to balding to bearded – that set the precedent for The Others.

The work itself happened in several stages, inspired by photographic customs common to Indian portraiture. First, Culmann visited the neighbourhood studios that still dot every other street and are widely used for identity photos, or for middle-class portraits – family photos, wedding shots, momentous occasions. Culmann shot the studio backdrops when they were empty, then took portraits of himself separately, testing up to 100 poses per character. The characters were then Photoshopped against the backdrops.

Many Indian portrait studios also apply artificial touches – lightning bolts, aeroplanes, lurid bouquets of flowers. The people in shot can seem an afterthought, their heads attached to readymade silhouettes and wacky backgrounds. “You can show up in a T-shirt and leave with a shot of yourself in a nice suit and tie,” says Culmann. Since everything is digitally manipulated, “people go to the studios to show themselves off in a certain way, that they find the most attractive, to show to others. Realism is not important.”



Phase 3 of The Others: Olivier Culmann supplied a torn-up, black and white print of one of his photos to an Indian studio, which recreated a full image. Photograph: Olivier Culmann/Tendance Floue

Culmann decided to push the project even further. Some studios also rework torn or faded old images of dead family members – not to their original state, but into enhanced versions (magicked into colour, given dramatic backgrounds). So Culmann purposefully ripped up his original black-and-white portraits and sent the morsels to assorted studios to do their thing. “Some of them are not very good: some go as far as cartoon,” he says, pointing to the resulting wonky eyes and added chest-hair. The final stage of The Others was to ask a local artist to paint the photographs.

Phase 4 of The Others – one of Olivier Culmann’s portraits reinterpreted in paint by an Indian artist. Photograph: Olivier Culmann/Tendance Floue

Culmann has never been wedded to one photographic style and the idea of authenticity troubles him. “Photography is only one suggested vision of the real,” he says. “You choose an instant, you frame it, and you exclude things.” In The Others, the places are real, and the subjects inspired by real personalities … but they’re channelled by a foreigner wearing makeup and digitally manipulated. In his world, there’s no such thing as reliable representation.

He titled the project The Others for its multiplicity of meanings and subjects. “In India, you define yourself in relation to the other: you situate yourself on a ladder, by who is above and below you.” Then there’s the country’s colonial past and oppression. “As a foreigner taking photos in India, I am also an ‘other’ – I don’t belong within their categories,” he says. Culmann felt his outsider status liberated him from the hierarchical structure of Indian society: “I can integrate anywhere, because I’m nobody.”

When he showed the series in Delhi, Indians were convinced the images were authentic. People would approach Culmann and say, sceptically: that’s not really you in the photos?

Indeed, visitors even posed with the pictures of Culmann in disguise – and told him how touched they were by his attention to detail. “The richness of the world today is in these exchanges,” says Culmann. “If we’re overly cautious, we say nothing of value. We learn nothing at all.”

• The Others, by Olivier Culmann, is published by Editions Xavier Barral

