Chennai Photogrammetry Workshop

Alex May was commissioned by Chennai Photo Biennale and supported by the British Council to lead a two-day online photogrammetry workshop with photographers from the Chennai area on 11 and 13 March 2022, followed by a presentation on 19 March 2022.

The workshop introduced photogrammetry as a creative process for rebuilding real-world objects as full-colour 3D models that could then be developed further in software such as Blender or game engines including Unity. Participants were encouraged to begin from their own surroundings, selecting objects that represented their place and daily experience, then learning how to photograph them carefully, process the images into models, and render them as digital forms.

The project connected directly with May’s wider use of photogrammetry as a way of thinking through memory, distance, and reconstruction. The source text linked the workshop to his residency work on A Kolkata, where the city was rebuilt remotely through other people’s photographs; here, the same medium became a tool for participants to translate local experience into spatial image-making of their own.