{"id":86736,"date":"2015-06-16T20:33:58","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T00:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=86736"},"modified":"2015-06-17T10:40:31","modified_gmt":"2015-06-17T14:40:31","slug":"the-treasure-maps-of-pamela-singh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/16\/the-treasure-maps-of-pamela-singh\/","title":{"rendered":"The Treasure Maps of Pamela Singh"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Pamela Singh, Treasure Maps 009<\/i>, 2014.<\/p><\/div>\n

Long before Kim Kardashian\u2019s Selfish<\/em><\/a>\u2014before the selfie was technologically feasible, let alone a generation\u2019s preferred form of self-expression\u2014Pamela Singh was taking pictures of herself. Her innovative, curiously intimate efforts at self-portraiture are the subject of \u201cThe Treasure Maps of Pamela Singh<\/a>,\u201d showing at sepia EYE through June 30.<\/p>\n

Singh boasts an unconventional CV\u2014born in New Delhi, she was crowned Miss India in 1982. In the UK, she was enmeshed in scandal in the late eighties, when, supposedly, she worked as an escort whose high-profile clients included two newspaper editors and the sports minister; she was married, briefly, to a convicted arms dealer. Again, in these post-Kardashian years, when sex tapes can mint a reputation and Instagram is probably the most interesting medium in art, none of this is surprising, much less damning\u2014but at the time it was too salacious for the public appetite. SHE WAS THE ESCORT GIRL WHOSE AFFAIRS WITH ESTABLISHMENT FIGURES SHOCKED BRITAIN<\/small>, reads a typically down-the-nose Daily Mail<\/em> headline from 2010. \u201cToday, Pamella Bordes chats up men on the internet.\u201d Don\u2019t we all?<\/p>\n

What Singh needed was a career change. In the nineties, hoping to discard her sordid past\u2014et cetera, et cetera\u2014Singh sought refuge in photography, for which she\u2019d always had an affinity; she took up a career as a photojournalist and was published in newspapers and magazines like\u00a0the\u00a0Independent<\/em>, the\u00a0Sunday Times<\/em>, Marie Claire<\/em>, the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>, Newsweek<\/em>, Paris Match<\/em>, and Photo<\/em>. Along the way it occurred to her to attach a rear-view mirror to her camera\u2014a true selfie stick, in that it was self-made and self-executed. \u201cIn this \u2018pre-selfie\u2019 world,\u201d as the gallery puts it, \u201cshe spent her days wandering through the maze of the city, inserting herself within the daily life of the townspeople.\u201d Now, some twenty years later, she\u2019s applied color to the photographs using oil, acrylic, vermillion, mud, and gold. The results, at their best, are as vibrant as anything in Selfish<\/em>, and as freighted in their guileless fascination with celebrity, femininity, and scandal-mongering.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Lorry Driver<\/em>, 1994-1995.<\/p><\/div>

\"949\"<\/a>

Treasure Maps 004<\/i>, 2014.<\/p><\/div>

\"961\"<\/a>

Treasure Maps 006<\/i>, 2014.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long before Kim Kardashian\u2019s Selfish\u2014before the selfie was technologically feasible, let alone a generation\u2019s preferred form of self-expression\u2014Pamela Singh was taking pictures of herself. Her innovative, curiously intimate efforts at self-portraiture are the subject of \u201cThe Treasure Maps of Pamela Singh,\u201d showing at sepia EYE through June 30. Singh boasts an unconventional CV\u2014born in New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2384],"tags":[1048,1103,18461,100,1098,12707,18462],"class_list":["post-86736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look","tag-india","tag-kim-kardashian","tag-pamela-singh","tag-photography","tag-scandal","tag-selfies","tag-sepiaeye"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Treasure Maps of Pamela Singh<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"June 16, 2015 \u2013 Long before Kim Kardashian\u2019s Selfish\u2014before the selfie was technologically feasible, let alone a generation\u2019s preferred form of self-expression\u2014Pamela\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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