Chikankari is a body of work made in 2014 with Paola Manfredi for her book of the same name. The project covered two things: some of the oldest and finest surviving pieces of Chikankari embroidery in Lucknow, and the techniques and processes behind the craft as it is still practised today.
The old pieces required access. Fabrics decades old, some over a century, with embroidery so fine it is hard to believe it was done by hand. Photographing them properly meant spending time with the families and custodians who hold these things, understanding what they were before pointing a camera at them.
The process work followed the embroidery from the drawing of the design through to the finished cloth, karigar by karigar. Chikankari is not a single technique but many, and the book needed to show the full range.
