Shilpa Gupta in a French castle

Shilpa Gupta (b. 1976) is a renowned contemporary artist from India, currently residing in Mumbai. In an exciting and rare opportunity to have access to her works an exhibition has been organised in a medieval castle of France until the end of October 2010.

Her work has been shown in leading international institutions and museums such as the Tate Modern and Serpentine Gallery in London, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Torino, Daimler Chrysler Contemporary in Berlin, Mori Museum in Tokyo, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New Museum and Queens Museum in New York and Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon, India amongst others.

Most of the pieces that we can feast our eyes on in the castle of Blandy have already been already exhibited in Paris or Lyon. But to exhibit them in the space of a medieval castle has the potential to change the way we receive and perceive them. Shilpa Gupta uses photography to create art installations: for example in 100 queues where she covered Tibetan prayer wheels with photographs of Indian people waiting in line. We don't know who those people are and why they are waiting. The installation gave us a deep sense of absurdity emphasised by the use of mills prayers that should ideally be infusing spirituality in us. Each of us could be one of those people following someone else without any clear goal or purpose in life. Is India searching for a way to go? A light at the end of a tunnel?  

Detail of Shilpa Gupta's "100 Queues", 2007-2008

Photo by Ela Bialkowska; Courtesy Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin and Yvon Lambert, Paris, New York

Prestel Publishers dedicated her a 248 page monography in 2010.

Blandy Art Tour(s) : until the 24th of October, Castle of Blandy-Les-Tours, France

Stephen Shore : The Nature of Photographs

Stephen Shore : The Nature of Photographs

An introduction to Stephen Shore would do no justice to the vast gamut of work produced by him in the 20th century. An almost stoic reaction that his photographs induce is deceptive in nature as his works, often of the banal consumerist landscapes across America, exhibit a surrealism that tactfully illustrates the formal aspects of photography. The new edition of his book The Nature of Photographs, Phaidon, 2010, written from the classes that he gave as Director of Photography at Bard College in the state of New-York, is a demonstrative masterpiece where he focuses on the technical tools used and required by photographers. He defines what is photography through the three states, the physical state, the representative state which is divided in four fields: the flatness, the frame, the moment, and the focus, and third the mental state. Each idea is illustrated through a picture/image produced by a contemporary photographer. A major contribution, this book is clear and sharp to understand what is photography and to learn about the history of contemporary photography. A must to get !

Homai Vyarawalla: A Retrospective

Looking back into the past and overhauling memories in order to create an image of the time gone by is what retrospection involves. In this unique exhibition “Homai Vyarawalla: A Retrospective” we find on display, for our senses to feast on, an entire history captured through the lens of India’s first woman Press photographer. This dynamic parsi woman born in 1913 witnessed the turbulent and changing times of India as a rebel colony, and then as a nascent yet proud nation until the seventies.

This is probably the most interesting part of the exhibition because it gives the opportunity to understand how her images contributed to "a certain kind of nationalist iconography embodied in heroic figures like Nehru and Gandhi" as notes Sabeena Gadihoke, curator of the exhibition and author of the book Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla.

Her close friendship with Nehru and the admiration that she had for him combined with his use of photography as a way to build the personification of India gave us a bright and modern image of the new democracy spanning across almost twenty years. Nehru's death marks a turning point in the way she was following the political life of India. Indira Gandhi's personality, the war in Pakistan, emergency proclaimed on June 25th, 1975 all in succession managed to disillusion Homai Vyarawalla with the nation and photography.

This exhibition showcases approximately 150-200 images including original silver gelatine prints, many printed by the photographer herself. On display are her old cameras, photographic equipment and other memorabilia.

Homai Vyarawalla: A Retrospective, National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi, until the 31st of October.

ARThinkSouthAsia (ATSA): Fellowship in Arts Management (2011-12)

ARThinkSouthAsia (ATSA), is a fully funded Fellowship in Arts Management (2011-12), addressed to today’s cultural practitioners. The Fellowship is being initiated and sponsored by the South Asian network of Goethe Institutes, the cultural institute of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The ATSA Fellowship is designed to help develop skills, knowledge, networks and experience of potential leaders in the cultural sector of South Asia which include museums, the visual and performing arts and digital media.

We welcome applications from practitioners working across a wide range of creative and cultural activity, as also from those who are working outside it who demonstrate a knowledge, understanding and passion for culture. Artists and persons with unconventional careers and experiences are also invited to apply.

Kindly note that the deadline for receipt of applications is 15 November 2010. For more information please log onto www.arthinksouthasia.org.

The Road-Side Electrician Shop

38 years old Chirodeep Chaudhuri is the national photo-editor of Time Out Bombay, Delhi and Bangalore.
His personal work is built and focused on one of his favorite cities: Bombay.
I asked him to choose a picture from his portfolios. He selected this photograph of a road-side electrician shop in black and white.
The subject of this photograph is thrown into abstraction with the lens of the camera being singularly focused on the "window-display" of this eclectic collection of electronic goods. The only slim reference to this being an ordinary sight in the street of Bombay is the shop shutter visible on the left.
It also reads as a pictoral allegory of the dense, overlaping, pushling and jostling city of Bombay.

Lucida : an emerging collective of photographers

A few days ago, I met Mridul Batra, co-founder of Lucida, an emerging indépendent photographers' collective emanating out of the National Institute of Design's first ever academic photography program in India.


Lucida aims to develop and support independant photography practice in the Arts, Photography Research and Education. At the same time it endeavors to influence photographic thinking through a design oriented approach in photography services. 

Their advisory board comprising of Sunil Gupta, Anna Fox (photographer and professor at University for Creative Arts of Farnham, UK) and Dr Deeper John Mathew (NID, Ahmedabad) provide Lucida support with their expertise in photography and curatorial projects.


Education is imparted through workshops: in June 2010, one such workshop was organised which focused on the practice of making a pinehole camera. The workshop introduced the participants to the world of early photography, where it only required a ligh-tight box with hand-made cameras. Learning how to use a pinehole camera, experimenting different exposures, being creative with their camera were the aims of Lucida's first project. The photographer Sihho Kito, who was a visiting professor at National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, was mentoring the 10 workshop participants.
Their future plans include organizing many such workshops for high school students and a tentative fellowship program for young photographers.

Three of the five founders of Lucida and the participants of the Pinehole Camera workshop. 

On the first row from the left, Mridul Batra. 

First row, in the middle: Suruchi Dumpawar.

Second row, third place from the left: Pradeep Kumar.

Sumit Dayal, The kites runners, Kabul, 2007

Sumit Dayal is born in 1981? He is an independant photograph based in Delhi.
The picture tells us the story of two young friends who could be Ali and Hassan, as in Khaled Hosseini's novel, The Kite Runners.

These two boys, who belonged to very different social classes and religious backgrounds, are also reminiscent of Sumit's childhood when he used to fly kites with his muslim friend Wahid in Kathmandu. For him, the snow capped mountains of Afghanistan in the background resonate the Himalayas in Nepal.

He uses photography as a medium to keep his childhood memories still alive and plays with the effect of the sepia tone that creates a strong feeling of nostalgia and going back to the past.

The blurring of the figures is also just enough to see the children but not enough to recognize them, making it possible for the viewer to appropriate the photograph for himself, as Sumit did with his childhood memories.

150 Years of Photography from India, Pakinstan and Bangladesh

After beeing shown at the Whitechapel in London, the 400 photos exhibition 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakinstan and Bangladesh will travel to Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland from the the 12th of June until the 22nd of August.
A symposium on South-Asia photography will be organised on the 12th and the 13th of June.  Among the different photographers and critics attending this event, will be Sunil Gupta, Dayanita Singh, Aveek Sen.


More information here:

http://www.fotomuseum.ch/


A review of the event at the Whitechapel is available through the following links:
Magnumphotos.com 

Thefreelibrary.com
Coolhunting.com
Lintermede.com
Asian Art Newspaper

The Guardian

An international residency for Sohrab Hura in Niort, France

During the month of August, Sohrab Hura is doing a residency organised by Pour l'instant, a non profit organisation that seeks to promote young international photographers, in Niort, France.
He, along with the seven other young photographers in residence, will be coached by a well-experienced photographer and a technical advisor.

More information on this project is available on: http://www.pourlinstant.com/

Vidura Jang Bahadur - Teresa Tan and Li Yang Liang - Chennai, 2006

The picture belongs to a work on the Chinese community in India started in 2006 and calls "Home".

Vidura takes us into the world of sisterhood and “parlour“-hood  inhabited by two sisters in law.

The timelessness of this moment is enclosed in this home cum-beauty parlour where the simple act of washing a woman’s hair encapsulates their shared comfort.

 The mise en scène comprising of the single source of light, the central whirring fan and the simple décor is visualized in this panoramic shot, almost like a still frame from a film reel.

Vidura Jang Bahadur - Picture of my grandmother - Bangalore, 2008

Vidura Jang Bahadur is a young photographer who lives in Delhi.

He has lived in China for over three years.

This picture belongs to a series on his grandmother started in 1997 which is still in progress.

Here, Vidura captures a moment of deep concentration and calm while his grandmother is praying in the morning time.

The lens comes so close to the subject isolating her from her material environment representing a rare moment of meditation.

The gnarled long fingers sure of their touch on the rosary perform the repetitive act of prayer. This movement captured by the photographer then becomes the focal point of her intense concentration leaving the rest of her body immobile.

“Kunti Devi, child widow, faceless citizen” by Prashant Panjiar

To launch this blog, I asked Prashant Panjiar, to choose one of his favorite pictures.

Prashant Panjiar is one of India’s best photojournalists and picture editors. Based in Delhi, he specializes in editorial and documentary photography. He is also actively involved in guiding young photographers through fellowship program and international press photo competition.

The picture that he has chosen is from his book King, Commoner, Citizen published by IndiaPicture in 2007.

“Kunti Devi, child widow, faceless citizen” was shot in 1999 in Bihar.

The picture tells us the story of a victim of ongoing caste war, Kunti Devi. She became a child widow when a landlord’s private army, killed her husband, along with 22 dalits of her village.

King, Commoner, Citizen is dedicated to her.

On the foreground, a small child shows us his back. Immediately, the viewer notices his black shaved head, a central point in the picture. At the back, a woman is sitting in front of a house door. There is a creation of a colored dialogue between the child’s chess board printed tee-shirt and her, shrouded in a purple sari. Furthermore, the shape of the smooth shaven head, symbol of death in Hindou religion, is resonated in the upturned basket lying in the background.

The atmosphere of the picture exudes a sense of timelessness where the faceless child widow seems to be trapped in no-mans-land.

The simplicity of the elements and their efficient organization in the picture make the subject emanate a sense of despair.

The picture has been shot after the journalist working with Prashant interviewed the young widow. If she was already married, she was staying at her mother’s house when the slaughter happened. Because she lost her husband, she knows now that she has no future. Her identity and her private grief is hidden from the outside world as she sits there stubbornly wrapped from head to toe, concealing herself. She resides in an intermediate space between life and death.

She never was a king, her dalit identity refused her citizenship and she is now no longer a commoner also.

Panjiar’s work can be viewed at www.panjiarphoto.com 

His recent work focuses on farmers' suicides in Vidarbha and can be seen here:

http://web.me.com/livewireimages/Multimedia/vidarbha/index.html

A new blog

Welcome to a new blog dedicated to Indian contemporary photography.
Why this blog? To show the wealth and the diversity of Indian photography today, to create a dialog between photographers, journalists and other artists, to give informations on exhibitions, books, catalogs, press focusing on Indian photography, finally to enjoy photography in India!