Archive

Aug 18

My Afghan Photo Album

Nazes Afroz

A TV camerawoman vying for a spot among male colleagues to cover the Nowruz celebration, Kabul, 2014 The news comes in waves. The Taliban have completed their takeover of...

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Aug 11

Landscape as Language...

Veeranganakumari Solanki

Huma Mulji, The City of a Thousand Rebellions, Sarwar Road, 26th July 2011, Textiles Dyes on Canvas, 152.4 cm x 121.9, 2018. The image was taken on 26July 2011, as a functioning water tower in...

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Jun 29

Transitioning Images:...

Veeranganakumari Solanki

Left : Matthew Krishanu, Crow (blue head), 2015. Photo Peter Mallet Right: Lubna Chowdhary, Code 3, 2021. Image courtesy: Angela Moore Images relaying on a screen or printed as a photograph act...

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Jun 4

Both/And: Shezad Dawood

Interview by Veeranganakumari Solanki

Still from Kalimpong,  VR environment, duration variable, 2016, Courtesy: UBIK Productions. London-based artist Shezad Dawood’s practice straddles film, images, sculpture, sound, virtual...

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May 28

The sonic imagery of...

Veeranganakumari Solanki

Savinder Bual, Pineapple Project, install shot at PEER, 2020, image credit Stephen White & Co. When an artist is considered ‘South-Asian’ or as part of the diaspora, they are...

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May 16

Worlding a Rhythm with...

Interview by Veeranganakumari Solanki

Chila Kumari Singh Burman, Hertford Bootle 1970, 2006. NOTE: The artwork features the artist's fathers ice cream van.   Chila Kumari Singh Burman, a multidisciplinary artist based in...

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May 8

Photographing Place...

Interview by Veeranganakumari Solanki

Left: Untitled, from the series Nim and Other Stories, 2012 Right: Street Scene with Bharat Stores, The Covid Triangle – for FT Magazine 2021   I completely reject this idea of holding...

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Apr 23

New Terrain: In...

Screenshots from  the art history timeline feature on Terrain.art Beth Citron is a curator and scholar who has worked extensively in the South Asian region. She is the Artistic Director for the...

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Mar 18

Photography beyond its...

Anisha Baid

Unknown photographer (USA), Child sitting on lap of ‘hidden mother’ covered in striped blanket, 1870s, tintype (collodion negative on enamelled iron sheet).Courtesy of Linda Fregni Nagler,...

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Mar 12

Collapsing Binaries in...

Anisha Baid

Man Ray, Blanche et Noire, 1926 negative print/gelatin silver photograph. Image from the cover of Negative/Positive (Routledge, 2020) by Geoffrey Batchen. This week, we had the pleasure of...

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Jan 22

The Art of Engagement:...

In conversation with Rahaab Allana

Cover of Worldly Affiliations (University of California Press, 2015) by Sonal Khullar    What place does lens based media occupy in your scholarship around modernism? The four...

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Jan 6

“Facts of...

Covers of Aspiring to Home (2012) and Unseeing Empire (2020) by Bakirathi Mani.   How did your own position as part of the diaspora come to bear in the publication, Aspiring to Home,...

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Dec 22

Making and Unmaking...

Cover of  PORTAL : The Curious Account of Achintya Bose  In this continuing conversation with Shan Bhattacharya around his recent book PORTAL : The Curious Account of Achintya...

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Dec 14

Photography and the...

Excerpt from the book,  PORTAL: The Curious Account of Achintya Bose, SSAF-Tulika Books, 2020 We recently spoke with Shan Bhattacharya, an artist and photographer based in Kolkata, about his...

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Oct 27

A History from Below:...

Interview by Rahaab Allana and Anisha...

Steven Deo, When We Become Our Role Models No. 2, 2004. (Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College Collection)   This week we had the extraordinary opportunity of interviewing and engaging with...

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Oct 21

Opening up Process...

Editorial

A still from a video unpacking of the The Packet This week we spoke with The Packet Collective, a formation of artists from Sri Lanka, some of whom are now spread across the world. The Packet is...

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Oct 5

The Moment of...

Rahaab Allana | Anisha Baid

Screenshot from lecture Prelude to a New Black Gaze by Tina Campt at Studium Generale Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. This week we had the pleasure of being in dialogue with an author and...

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Sep 25

Islands of Our Bodies...

Installation View from Islands of Our Bodies in the exhibition Look,Stranger! at Serendipity Arts Festival Goa, 2019. Image: Philippe Calia This week, we were delighted to be in conversation...

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Sep 3

Magic of Coincidence:...

Anisha Baid

Crowds at Expo 67', Montreal, Canada. This week, we present a video interview with writer and doctoral student Diva Gujral, around her research interests in photographic practices in...

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Aug 18

Potential Worlds:...

Introduction: Rahaab Allana

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay. The Potential History of Palestine, 2013 © Photograph: Leevetamar, 2019. Anti-colonial work should not be restricted to time and place, but is on going process that...

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Aug 11

Between Shows –...

Text: Anisha Baid / Conversation:...

We know David Campany as an eclectic curator and writer, and he has recently become Managing Director of Programs at the International Center of Photography, New York.  Having engaged rigorously...

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Aug 1

Women and Photography...

Anisha Baid

  We spoke with Prof. Malavika Karlekar, Editor of the Indian Journal of Gender Studies and Curator of the long running exhibition, Re-presenting Indian Women: A Visual Documentary,...

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Jul 21

The Home as Stage...

Anisha Baid

  This week we spoke with author/curator Lola Mac Dougall, the Founding Director of GoaPhoto and Artistic Director of JaipurPhoto. She takes us through her journey of engagement with...

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Jul 14

Framing Photographic...

Anisha Baid

We spoke with Nathaniel Gaskell, Co-founder and Associate Director of the Museum of Art and Photography in Bangalore, about his recent publication co-authored with Diva Gujral – charting over...

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Jul 6

Criticality, Comfort...

Anisha Baid

Screenshot from a session of the FICA Virtual Reading Group What follows is an interview with Annalisa Mansukhani and Sukanya Deb from the Programming Team of the Foundation for Indian...

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Jun 28

‘A Realist Alibi’...

Anisha Baid

Photoshop Assemblage showing vaious templates imported from Manokamana shrine and now used at the Dakshinakali shrine in Kathmandu valley. Courtesy : Christopher Pinney Photography is prophetic,...

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Jun 21

‘More than...

Anisha Baid

  The first of a two-part conversation with Prof. Christopher Pinney on his current work leading the research project – Photodemos/Citizens of Photography, at University College, London,...

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May 20

View India:...

Anisha Baid

What interests me about photography is how the camera becomes a prosthetic for the body and mind, and how each photography is a micro-archive in and of itself - Arshad Hakim (View India...

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Apr 30

Launch conversation:...

As a part of our digital launch with Serendipity Arts Festival, we invited PIX contributors Kannagi Khanna, and Rajyashri Goody along with Sabeena Gadihoke for a conversation around domestic...

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Oct 6

Age of the Sene...

Ravikumar Kashi interviewed by Anisha...

  Ravi Kashi is an artist and the author of Flexing Muscles, a publication by Reliable Copy. Years of artistic research around the vernacular culture of political banners in Bangalore...

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Oct 6

Collage as a Post...

An Interview with Muvindu Binoy

Installation View, The Holy Merchandise, Muvindu Binoy “Collage is the noble conquest of the irrational, the coupling of two realities, irreconcilable in appearance, upon a plane...

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Jun 25

Jazz, Survival, and...

Priyanka Dasgupta & Chad Marshall

Pigeonhole (2019) Dodd Galleries. Installation views courtesy: Priyanka Dasgupta and Chad Marshall. When histories are imagined, are they simultaneously fictionalized? Or is fiction the voice...

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Jun 12

The Vintage...

Shaivyya Gupta

"Existential Angst," 2013, from the series Download Errors, is a daunting declaration about the state of our existence, a reminder of our failed and failing attachments. All installation views...

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Oct 5

Impermanence: Notes on...

Sonam Tsering with his father in Dharamsala, 1964 In much of the German author W. G. Sebald's shadowy fiction, photographs appear like phantasmagoric guides, leading protagonists and readers alike...

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Sep 21

The Image in the...

Arnav Adhikari

Installation view of Mario Klingemann's 79530 Self-portraits (2018) at the exhibition Gradient Descent / Courtesy Nature Morte When Google released the first set of images created with its...

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Sep 8

The New Studio Madras:...

Rishi Kochhar

A photograph by C.B. Shastri on a film set in Srinagar, c. 1940s (New Studio Madras) In 2016, one of the oldest running photo studios in the world, Kolkata's Bourne & Shephard, was forced...

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Aug 25

A Perfect Shot:...

Vamika Jain. Introduction by Arnav...

First tiger trophy of Manvendra Maharaja Narendra Singh at the age of eleven, 1926  (Royal Collection, Panna) To the contemporary viewer, the traditional hunting photograph might offer little...

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Aug 8

The Place of Shahidul...

Rahaab Allana

From A Struggle for Democracy, 1987–1990 No heaven, no hell, no everafter, do I care for when I’m gone Peace here I seek, in this sand and soil, this place where I was born As oceans deep,...

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Jul 29

An archive as...

Interview with Diwas Raja KC, Curator...

Dalit protest in Kathmandu, Bimal C. Sharma, 1999 The chances of ‘truth' surviving the onslaught of power are very slim indeed; it is always in danger of being maneuvered out of the world not...

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Jul 22

The S.T.A.R.S Archive...

In conversation with Zoé E. Headley,...

Image from STARS Archive This week, in a recorded interview on PIX posts, we speak to Zoé E. Headley, anthropologist and founder of the S.T.A.R.S collective, a multidisciplinary research...

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Jul 16

Coming up: Chennai...

Audio post: In conversation with the...

Installations at Lighthouse MRTS station of the Urban Water Showcase, Artist: Kannagi Khanna The study of exhibitions provides a fascinating route into art history. Here the social, political and...

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Jul 7

Discussing Photography...

Interview with Dr. Aileen Blaney and...

One of the primary concerns of photography in India today is whether pedagogy can enable the practitioner to develop critical objectivity or perhaps an objective critique within an...

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Jul 2

Recounting the...

An interview with co-curator, Dr....

Photography as a form of critical social engagement comes to the fore in exhibitions like Behind the Indian Boom: Inequality and Resistance at the Heart of Economic Growth, curated by documentary...

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Jun 25

Jeevan Rekha:...

Sukanya Baskar explores an unseen...

Jeevan Rekha, released 1 January 1974. Vinyl record cover reproduces the same image, seen later in the article. This week’s post explores an unseen album from a private collection, showcasing...

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Jun 16

Talking about FotoFest...

Part 2 of a conversation with Sunil...

Cover of the publication, Disrupted Borders (1993). Cover Image: Jorma Puranen The works exhibited by 47 artists from India in FotoFest2018 was all produced in the 21st century, which, as...

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Jun 8

Talking about FotoFest...

Part 1 of a conversation with Sunil...

Cover image: Sandip Kuriakose How do contemporary photographers and artists of Indian origin imagine the diverse and complicated subjectivities of Indian-ness, regardless of where they live?...

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May 30

Afterimage of...

Part 2 of a conversation with Prof....

Postcard, late 19th-early 20th century featured in the book. Private Collection Familiarity, dissonance, passivity and then re-engagement are the shifting fault lines around how 19th century...

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May 24

Afterimage of...

In conversation with Prof. Zahid R....

Book cover, Afterimage of Empire: Photography in Nineteenth-Century India  The first of a two-part conversation with Prof. Zahid R. Chaudhary on his earlier publication, Afterimage of...

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May 16

Life after Ritwik...

Nabarupa Bhattacharjee, documentary...

Surama Ghatak, 1960s, Mumbai   It was 1965, and the lives of Surama (endearingly, Thamma) and Ritwik were at a cusp. He wrote a letter to Thamma asking her opinion on starting a new...

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May 8

Life after Ritwik...

Nabarupa Bhattacharjee, documentary...

Surama Ghatak at her residence in Kolkata, 2016   This piece, one of two posts, is dedicated to the memory of Surama Ghatak (14 November 1926 – 7 May 2018), wife of Ritwik Ghatak. Thamma...

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Apr 30

Visual archives as a...

Sohail Akbar, Associate Professor at...

Dr. Rehana Bashir's graduation portrait, 1953, Bashir Family Collection  [Family albums’] meanings are social as well as personal – and the social influences the personal. Family...

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Apr 21

What colour is the...

L. Somi Roy, film curator and...

Maharaja Churachand Singh of Manipur and Maharani Dhanamanjuri Devi, 1905, The Imasi Foundation I don’t know how to write except from what I hear, from what I experience. I write from what I...

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Apr 15

In Conversation, Lukas...

Artist and co-author of Photo...

Large format portraits, Jamalistan Studios, 1960s “Photography as craft is what this splendid volume examines – photography at the living, bleeding intersection of culture, war, frontier and...

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Apr 8

Re-creating Pastness

Sabeena Gadihoke, Professor at the...

View of Light Works exhibition. 2017. Jitendra Arya Foundation "While the scene stills and on-the-set candid shots would be used to sell the movie, the portraits could be used to introduce a...

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Mar 31

Collecting family...

An interview with Deepali Dewan, Dan...

Installation view of The Family Camera exhibition (2017). Courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum © ROM. Photo Credit: Brian Boyle, MPA, FPPO. “I am a passionate lover of the snapshot because of...

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Mar 14

Audacious imaginings

Do the advancements in imaging technology call for a new aesthetic of photography? Today, art institutions are served with the challenge of disseminating the techniques, truths and potential...

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Mar 19

Myanmar’s...

Long gone are the days of Myanmar’s magazine culture. In years past, editors, writers and designers would meet in teashops across Yangon, making arrangements for their latest editions. Though...

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Jan 17

A South Asian Identity

How a motley collection of images reasserts the strength of a sub-continental ethos woven from shared cultural strands A subtle shift in the plates rocked the very heart of Patan in Nepal...

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