Journal

Artist In Residence: Dolly Devi

For this month’s Artist in Residence, we settled in with photographer Dolly Devi whose work livens up the Permit Room. Early social media platforms. Her work style. Balancing fashion and photography. A knitwear line. The Smiths. We talk about it all.

“I fought against becoming a photographer for a long time. I was always interested in photography but it was never something I planned to do seriously”, says photographer Dolly Devi. In 2024 we reached out to her to showcase a couple of her works, which now sit proudly in Permit Room Oxford and Permit Room Portobello.

Born in Imphal in northeastern India and raised in Assam, Dolly moved to Mangalore in the south of the country to pursue a degree in fashion design. “Growing up in the 90s and the age of the Internet, I was casually dabbling in photography and uploading my work on platforms like Facebook and Orkut. I noticed that people liked my images and I thought to myself ‘okay, this is a thing, I guess’. Which is why even though I had the option to study photography, I chose not to because I thought I could do it anyway. Instead, I opted for fashion design.” After graduating in 2012, Dolly worked with fashion brands for a few years before it started to feel like a lot. Then, in 2015 she started freelancing as a photographer, following requests from brands and designers to shoot their collections and campaigns. “It took me 6 months to realise that this could be my career because it’s something I truly enjoy – and it grew organically from there.”

When she first started, she was unintentionally photographing a lot of men, something she found really interesting – shooting men from a female gaze. But, for her, it’s never been about female or male subjects, but more about following her intuition and what’s happening in that very moment. “It’s the space between emotion and art that I tend to focus on. I’m more interested in the moment between shots, as opposed to moments where a model is posing. What matters most to me is if it’s authentic or not”, she adds.

The pursuit of these in-between moments is what’s laid the foundation for Dolly’s own way of working – one that tends to go with the flow. While she always goes in with an idea, having to make moodboards tends to spoil the experience for her. And so while she presents an idea to her clients, she’s constantly tweaking things – the lights, the movement, the props. “That’s the biggest challenge – getting the best out of any situation. You have to think about how you can turn things around if needed.”

And while working in a commercial capacity can be restrictive in certain ways, she finds that it “really pushes you to be more creative within certain boundaries. That’s the space I want to be in.” However, it hasn’t always been easy, especially in the early days. She found herself having to push back a lot when presenting abstract images and outtakes to clients. “Clients always look at the product, for them the clothes have to look nice, and I understand that. That really pushed me to think about the ways that I can shoot clothes differently. My background in fashion design helped me massively – because I was able to understand the construction of the garment, I was able to pull out interesting details or movement and bring these to life through my images.” She’s also quick to add that things are definitely changing, there are a lot of young people experimenting and trying different things which is helping change the Indian landscape. “Once brands see it, it’s easier for them to visualise it too.”

When asked about what she’s working on next, her tone hints at a sense of quiet excitement. Recognising an internal desire to slow down, she recently moved to Himachal Pradesh, a state in the western Himalayas. “One of the reasons I moved to Himachal is because I want to get back to fashion design. I want to do something with clothes and/ or jewellery. It’s still very much in the planning stages, but where I’m moving to, Kangra Valley, has a whole shepherd community. I want to work with them, document the community and experiment with wool. The Indian market for knitwear is still quite nascent and I want to see where that might take me. I have very basic knitting skills [laughs] and I want to further finesse it and I know it won’t be easy, but I’m ready to start slow. These past two years have been a major change for me – mentally I’ve felt a lot calmer and a lot more confident. I now want to take it to the next level and see where it leads me.”

Quick five with Dolly…

Someone whose work inspires you… Martin Parr CBE
Favourite brand you’ve worked with… NorBlack NorWhite. It’s always fun working with them and there’s a lot of freedom to try things.
Brand you want to work with… Jil Sander. I love how they document fabrics and garments.
Favourite shoot location… Anywhere in South India. It’s so very interesting.
Musician you keep listening to… There’s two, actually. The first, Air – I really like how they capture sensual emotions in their music. And then, The Smiths for their lyrics.