Even in her early photographs—those closer to the genre of photojournalism—Dayanita Singh’s gaze tends to explore the intimacy that unfolds within closed spaces. I am as I am, a series shot in Varanasi in 1999, is a documentary piece on the daily lives of the girls who live at an ashram, and also her observation of a closed and suspended space.

In Varanasi everything is on display and seems to urgently require the camera’s attention. There the photographer finds the ashram to be a place outside the urban maelstrom from where it is possible to reencounter the city. The Anandamayi ashram is a religious center that houses 40 girls. It is a closed space that follows to its own regulations: the girls do not come into contact with the exterior and their days are regulated by ceremonies, chores, and classes. Their world extends to where their eyes can see from the building’s rooftop, a space that is the axis of the series. All around them the city is bustling, while on the other side the Ganges River it sprawls into a shapeless immensity. Much like the girl who is suspended in mid air looking out onto a world we are unable to see, the ashram perpetrates a suspension of their lives, defined by routines and light games, tedium and grace, within a city that also seems to be suspended in the pursuit of another life.