Wednesday, June 1, 2022 — 5
Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Not made for your consumption

When I was younger, I would 
draw on the walls and furniture 
in my bedroom. One of my first 
memories was taking my mom’s 
bright red lipstick and smearing 
it on my dresser to replicate the 
dressers that I saw on HGTV. 
While 
I 
definitely 
got 
into 
trouble with my parents, the 
memory marks the first of many 
creative endeavors. 
In fact, art is the only thing 
in my life that came easy to me. 
It took years of bad essays and 
parent-teacher conferences for 
me to write coherently. It took 
hundreds of Kumon practice 
problems for me to be decent at 
math. And overall, I would say 
I was never really exceptionally 
good at any one thing. But art, in 
particular, photography, always 
came naturally. 
At first, I used photography 
as a method of breaking the 
ice and forming connections 
with people. I remember once 
approaching 
an 
elderly 
man 
near the farmer’s market in 
downtown Detroit. After asking 
him if I could take his picture, 
our conversation led to him 
recounting memories from his 
past music career in Motown. 
He was, of course, a natural 
in front of the camera, and I 
vividly 
remember 
the 
smile 
on his face after I showed him 
his portrait. That’s why I love 
photography: The entire process 
is gratifying. I love approaching 
a subject, asking them if I can 
take their portrait and watching 
the conversation rapidly grow 
and evolve into one about their 
daughter, their recent vacation 
or their old job instead. I 
love taking their picture and 
watching them find their angles, 
poses 
and, 
eventually, 
their 
confidence. I love showing them 
their image on the two-by-two 
screen of the camera, watching 
their face quickly light up as 
they realize that they are, in fact, 
beautiful.
Photography, as a whole, has 
always given me fulfillment. 
When I take photos of others, 
whether it be a family member 
or a stranger, it has always felt 
like giving out a gift. In terms 
of self-expression, photography 
has always been able to capture 
the depth of human emotion 

better than I have ever been able 
to write or say. 
And I am good at photography. 
In fact, it is one of the only things 
I am good at. I wasn’t chosen 
to go to math competitions. I 
sat on the bench for most of my 
volleyball games. I never placed 
highly at the science fair. So 
when 
my 
teacher 
submitted 
my 
photograph 
to 
an 
art 
competition in the 7th grade, and 
I won a national award, I felt a 
rush of newfound excitement in 
my life. My work was hanging 
in a fancy exhibit in New York 
City, I received a heavy silver 
medal and I got invited to an 
award ceremony in Carnegie 
Hall. There is a rush that comes 
with winning an award and 
being praised, especially when 
you have low confidence and 
are bad at a lot of other things. 
It 
inflates 
your 
ego, 
gives 
you a false semblance of self-

worth and grants you a sense of 
belonging in a hypercompetitive 
environment. My photography 
talents allowed me to express 
myself, but my awards made 
me feel like I was finally good 
enough at something.
My view of art started to shift 
after I won my first award. It 
wasn’t a fun pastime anymore 
but a way to expand trophies 
on my bedroom shelf. I started 
taking many more photos, but 
more tactfully. You see, many 
of these art competitions are 
filled with a certain type of 
judges — rich, highly educated, 
white. And as I started to cater 
my work to awards, I started to 
inadvertently cater my work to 
the white gaze.
The white gaze, popularized by 
Toni Morrison, is the assumption 
that the observer of the work 

is white. Artists and writers 
of Color have been reckoning 
with how the white gaze has 
influenced 
their 
work 
both 
subconsciously and consciously. 
Blaise 
Allysen 
Kearsley, 
a 
correspondent of the Boston 
Globe, writes that 
 
”Foundational 
to the centering and elevation of 
whiteness in America, the white 
gaze sees Blackness only within 
the context of comparison and 
alterity. It’s the shallow lens of 
privilege, ingrained bias, and 
misrepresentation that creates 
both violent acts and micro-
aggressive behaviors.” 
It didn’t take me long to 
understand what the white gaze 
wanted. I noticed a pattern in my 
photographs that won awards 
versus those that didn’t. The 
white gaze likes a shallow form 
of diversity. They like photos of 
brown skin subjects in bright 
color sarees and bindis. They like 

photos of brown skin refugees 
with a sad-longing on their 
faces. It feels exotic but still easy 
to consume, easy to understand. 
The white gaze wants to see 
photography 
fulfill 
their 
preconceived notions of people 
of Color. That’s why publications 
often solely show people of Color 
in states of distress rather than 
in celebrations. They like work 
that makes them feel worldly and 
well-traveled from the comfort 
of their suburban home. 
The work that won awards 
always had a serious tone, yet it 
didn’t really explore anything 
substantive. For example, in my 
college admission portfolio, I 
included a photo of my family 
friend standing in front of a 
Bollywood movie on a projector. 

The formula for a birthday 
party (if you’re my Amma and 
her friends)

On April 24, my Amma turned 
another year older. This year 
was her third birthday during 
the pandemic, and thanks to 
vaccines and other precautionary 
measures, she was finally able to 
celebrate with her friends again. 
Over the years, I’ve been told by 
my Amma what she and her friends 
do for each other’s milestone 
birthdays. However, I have never 
actually seen what unfolds at one 
of these “aunty birthday parties,” 
as I like to call them, since the rest 
of my family and I typically wait 
at home while my Amma is away, 
pondering what to have for dinner. 
Instead, I just gather information 
from the hundreds of pictures and 
videos my Amma shows me the 
next day.
I’ve always wondered what 
happens at one of these parties. 
I know everyone always has a 
splendid time, but there’s always 
so much coordination involved 
in executing said parties that I 
honestly could not even imagine.
However, here’s what I do 
know: 
1. They all wear matching saris.
Matching saris are crucial for 
the photo ops. The birthday girl 
will wear a color no one else wears, 
carefully chosen by the friend 
group. They factor in things like 
what the birthday girl’s favorite 
color is, what color sari she doesn’t 
own yet and what she looks best 
in. For example, my Amma wore 
a dark pink sari this year. Two of 
her friends wore orange, another 

two wore lavender, another two 
wore yellow, but she was the only 
one wearing dark pink. All the 
saris had a white floral design that 
glistened and shimmered in the 
light. The sleeves of their blouses 
had 
matching 
embellishments 
while the rest of the blouse was 
plain, creating a contrast that 
made the details of the sari even 
more striking. The group orders 
the saris and delivers them to each 
other slyly, keeping the birthday 
girl in the dark about what the 
outfit looks like until the night 
before, or morning of, the party.
2. Decorations are a must. 
Again, 
for 
the 
photo 
ops, 
decorations are key. Typically, 
these 
decorations 
include 
balloons, streamers or anything 
that fits the “theme” of the party. 
For my Amma’s party this year, 
the theme was “music,” since one 
of her favorite hobbies is singing, 
so the walls were adorned with 
streamers and balloons shaped 
like musical notes. In the corners 
of the room, they had little 
instruments and tanpuras set up, 
along with more balloons that said 
“50” on them. (Even though my 
Amma didn’t turn 50 this year, 
this was considered a “make-up” 
party since she couldn’t celebrate 
with her friends on her actual 
50th birthday.) My Amma was 
even given a flower crown made of 
real, dark pink and white flowers, 
deliberately chosen to perfectly 
match her sari.
3. 
The 
birthday 
girl 
is 
blindfolded and taken to a “secret 
location.”

Read more at michigandaily.com

SMARANI KOMANDURI/MiC

SMARANI KOMANDURI
MiC Columnist

MAYA KOGULAN/MiC

MAYA KOGULAN
MiC Columnist

Read more at michigandaily.com