There is one picture in Mumbai-based photographer Megha Singha’s I Love My Friends, But They’re Killing Me that instantly jogged my memory of Addison Rae’s single Fame is a Gun. In it, Singha’s topic, Nandini, lies on vivid pink bedsheets imprinted with the Swarovski brand, holding a tripod, balancing a plastic gun between her legs. The gun, which replaces the cellphone on the tripod, factors to the topic’s head as she poses for an image. There is not any room for subtlety on this commentary as each Singha’s venture and Rae’s tune are deeply involved with this all-consuming, generally harmful pursuit of magnificence and fame. The pop star sings of realizing how fame can be the one factor “that could mend her broken heart”, confessing unabashedly how hungry she is to be a star. I wouldn’t be shocked if the younger girls in these portraits, who’ve achieved micro-celebrity standing as influencers, actuality TV stars, and aspiring actresses, are simply as drawn to the world she sings about.
Surprisingly, the tune was not an inspiration to the photographer, who says, on this specific occasion, it was the artist Rebecca Horn’s set up titled Room of Mutual Destruction, that includes a gun going through a mirror, and the poster for Michelangelo Antonio’s 1966 movie Blow Up that made it to the moodboard. Guns have been a recurring prop in her work, showing closely in previous initiatives. For Singha, there are lots of associations from childhood. She recollects toy weapons and moments of play in her early childhood, when she placed on dramatic performances for her household, which concerned appearing as if she had been injured. “These images are inspired by how play and performance can collide into one,” Singha explains over e-mail.
Singha emphasises that efficiency is central to this work, catalysed by her curiosity in how magnificence is carried out on and off the web. “My mum is extremely cool and has always been interested in new beauty trends, so when Kim Kardashian got her famous vampire facial, she somehow convinced the dermatologists in the town of Jorhat, where she lives, to explore it locally,” Singha recounts. This specific expertise sparked curiosity concerning the globalisation of magnificence tradition. “I was so fascinated by how something that originated in celebrity culture seeped into a small town in India, and was constantly thinking of ways I could approach it through photography.”
The photographer spent lots of time researching this tradition and the women who participated within the efficiency of magnificence on-line. “I spent most of 2024 understanding this world, talking to the girls and getting to know them as I didn’t want my own preconceptions, good or bad, to influence the images,” she shares. Singha explains that the pictures should not a critique of this tradition however fairly an exploration of the way it manifests throughout geographies and socioeconomic backgrounds, shaping concepts of femininity and want within the course of.
The portraits, shot on 35mm movie with a direct flash, function Singha’s topics lounging of their bedrooms and dwelling rooms, sprawled over a velvet armchair or posing by a cluttered desk. The use of the home house was essential for the photographer to create a way of intimacy. Singha was equally drawn to those interiors as a result of they mirrored a special facet of the nation, extra truthful to her personal actuality and formed by world visible tradition and consumerism. “I wanted to move away from certain narratives and tropes that people expect of a photograph shot in India,” she says. Instead, she relied on the objects she discovered within the topic bedrooms, such because the Playboy posters, Swarovski bedsheets and red-light remedy machines, to replicate this symbiotic, world financial system of pictures and aspiration.
Stylist Rupangi Grover, who labored intently with Singha, had an analogous method to styling this venture, which concerned fostering intimacy by means of taking part in gown up, dialog and spending time collectively of their home areas. “I found myself pulling pieces from their mothers’ wardrobes, looking through childhood photographs pinned to bedroom walls, and rummaging through jewellery boxes and beauty drawers”, Grover tells Dazed, explaining how the ultimate seems to be within the collection mix items from her personal assortment, some handpicked from up to date Indian designers and the women’ personal wardrobes. “A lot of the styling leans into softness, sheerness, lace, lingerie, and hand-crocheted elements, which introduced a DIY sensibility while adding a layer of complexity to familiar ideas of femininity and sexiness.”
Despite the liberty these girls entry by means of their on-line fame, Singha factors out how they’re nonetheless negotiating familial and gendered expectations. “One girl who comes from a conservative background gave us permission to take her photographs but insisted we do it at a time when her father wasn’t around, as he would not approve of it even though he has a framed selfie of her in the living room,” she says. Singha additionally shares, with out going into specifics, how one other woman was equally punished as a young person for going in opposition to guidelines of femininity tied to modesty and custom. “I am excited to explore this tension further through this series – maybe I will go to my hometown in northeast India, or smaller towns, to see the story through a new lens. [It could] reveal new ways of looking at femininity and aspiration in the country”
Megha Singha’s I Love My Friends, But They’re Killing Me was shortlisted for the 2026 Aperture Portfolio Prize.