Book Timeline _{2000 - 2009}

2000 : The Demello Vado exhibition is held in Goa for three weeks at the Saligao Institute in December 2000 to early January 2001. Singh invites the sitters, all residents of the village of Saligao, to peel their portraits off the wall and take the prints home at the closing
of the exhibition. Keller suggests that Singh turn her photographs of Mona Ahmed into a book. Singh writes to Ahmed from Zurich to ask if she is amenable to the project, to which she enigmatically
replies: “The whole world calls me eunuch; you call me unique. First you tell me which is true, then I will answer you.” Keller suggests that Ahmed write the entire text for the book upon reading her response. She agrees and does so in the form of emails to him.

2001 : Myself Mona Ahmed is published by Scalo. Mona hosts the book release at the Mehendiyan cemetery, Delhi, where she lived and is now buried, having died on 9 September 2017. The book is printed by Steidl.
Singh meets Gerhard Steidl in person for the first time at her exhibition Empty Spaces at the Frith Street Gallery, London. Having recently printed Myself Mona Ahmed for Scalo, Steidl tells Singh that a photographer should always be present at the printing press when making a book. He asks her to call him when she next wishes to make a book.

2002 : Singh spends time as an artist-in-residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, where she photographs the museum’s chairs as part of her then ongoing series, Chairs. It is at this time that she begins to make photo-letters for her travel companions by cutting images from her contact sheets and pasting them into Moleskine accordion-fold books. Each photo-letter has two copies: one for the friend she is addressing and one that Singh keeps on her shelf in her studio kitchen.Singh’s collection of photo-letter Moleskins goes on to become the work, Kitchen Museum.

2003 : Privacy is published to accompany Dayanita Singh: Privacy, an exhibition held at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. It is Singh’s first book published by Steidl.

2005 : Chairs, Singh’s first accordion-fold book, is published by Steidl. It is printed in an initial run of 1,000 copies, with 500 copies for the Isabella Gardner Stewart Museum and 500 for Singh. Singh’s copies are allocated into editions of ten and then disseminated by 50 of her friends, who become the book’s distributors. Each collaborator can distribute their edition as they please; Singh’s only condition is that they are not to sell the books. During the Chairs exhibition at Frith Street Gallery, Singh invites Gerhard Steidl to see a private exhibition of the Kitchen Museum. When he sees the photo-letters unfurled and displayed, he offers to publish all 32 of them. They agree to publish a set containing seven volumes, which they do in 2008 in the form of Sent a Letter.

2007 : Go Away Closer is published by Steidl. Silver gelatin prints of the Go Away Closer series are subsequently shown in an exhibition at Frith Street Gallery, London.

2008 : Singh creates her first book-as-exhibition when Sent a Letter is published by Steidl. The 3,000 empty boxes for the book are made in New Delhi and shipped to Göttingen. Sent a Letter goes on to become Singh’s most exhibited work.

2008 : The Ladies of Calcutta exhibition opens at Bose Pacia Gallery, Kolkata. Here, too, Singh invites the sitters to take their portraits off the wall and carry them home at the closing of the
exhibition. It is during this exhibition that Singh places Sent a Letter in the vitrines of Satramdas Dhalamal Jewellers’ shop window, where it remains on view for ten years. This goes on to become Singh’s longest running and most seen exhibition.

2009 : Blue Book is published. Two years later, it becomes the first of Singh’s books to be shown as a book on the wall in Elusive Truth: Evolving Medium, an exhibition at Khoj Studios, New Delhi.