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.