From Rameshwar Broota’s abstract notions of the medium at Sakshi Gallery to Riyas Komu’s lionising of football players through gigantic photo-portraits at The Guild. Jitish Kallat and Rashid Rana’s photo-installations at Chemould were all about impact while Baba Anand’s popish pictures of Chinese dolls at Chatterjee and Lal was a celebration of kitsch. This, we are told, is just the tip of the iceberg as we can hope to see more photo-exhibitions by experimental artists and full-time photographers.

“With the democratisation of the camera and its image-making process, there is an increasing use of video cameras, mobile cameras and sound recorders in the early 21st century digital world. This is just adding on to the existing classical genres of documentary photography to make things truly exciting for the medium,” say Bose Krishnamachari who has curated Singh’s exhibition, Everyone is a Camera, a pun on Pop artist Joseph Bauy’s saying, “Every one is an artist.”

Dinesh Vazirani, who was one of the first to host a suite of Komu’s photographs on his art portal saffronart.com, says that the art market is now ready to take photography seriously.

“We saw an increasing interest in graphic art and serigraphy when the prices of paintings went out of the reach of many mid-level collectors. Now we are experiencing a similar trend with photography. Of course, the quality of work and positioning of the artist undertaking the new medium is important,” states a vehement Vazirani.

Matthieu Foss, a Paris based art photography dealer who was one of the founding members of trade fair Paris Photo, has been promoting shutterbugs for a year in the city. “Artists like Komu, Tejal Shah and Shilpa Gupta have been exploring the medium for a while now. But as the medium gets more exposure, people have a greater interest in it. Tasveer in Delhi and my partnership with Chatterjee and Lal in Mumbai have given the medium a lot more exposure,” observes Foss, who has many shows lined up for the future.

On the list of shows is a travelling exhibition featuring Bharat Sikka whose show Space Between is a look at evolving globalised India. “It’s a documentation of the new and the old and that vague, unsure space in between,” observes Foss. The show travels from Kolkata at Bose Pacia, to Delhi at Nature Mort and comes to Mumbai on February 27.

Delhi’s Gauri Gill, known for powerful black-and-white documentary style photographs will be showing a series called The Americans—the Indian Diaspora in America in March. This will be her first colour exhibition.