The third edition of the Delhi Photo Festival presents a series of exhibitions that delve into Indian society, history, conventions, and culture. A spotlight on four exhibitions that reflect this country’s abundant riches and the talent of the photographers exploring them.
The audience rediscover a historical moment thanks to the exhibition Birth of a Nation which draws on Kishor Parekh’s archives of the labor pains of Bangladesh in 1971. Having covered, among others, the Sino-Indian War of 1962, the 1965 conflict with Pakistan, and the Bihar Famine of 1967, this great Indian reporter of the 1960s–70s was a unique witness of the Bangladesh Liberation War fought between March and December 1971. Population displacement, atrocities committed on civilians by the Bengali guerrillas supported by the Indian army and by the Pakistani enemy, famines, plunder of towns and villages: Kishor Parekh’s photos bear witness to the extreme violence that accompanied the birth of Bangladesh. It is one of the most poignant and rich photographic testimonies of a major event in contemporary Indian history.
Another genre and another subject, The Others by Olivier Culmann invites us to discover a gallery of portraits of ordinary men in India. It goes beyond a catalog of emblematic figures of Indian society, such as the guru, the young city Sikh, the policeman, the Bengali functionary…
Sarker Protick takes us on a journey from Bangladesh to Dacca in order to discover the universe of the film industry. “Dhallywood” is to Dacca what Bollywood is to Bombay. With hundreds of films produced annually since the 1960s, Dhallywood cinema, which relies on simple storylines of heroes and villains and love stories which, despite all obstacles, always end well, accompanied the childhood and adolescence of the young photographer, and of many young Bangladeshi.
As a last stop on our visit, we pause before Karan Vaid’s images. The young photographer based in Delhi presents Best in Show, an exhibition on dog competitions in India. Introduced in the late nineteenth century by the British, these competitions have continued to enjoy popularity throughout the country. Karan Vaid follows the unfolding of the competitions with their long periods of waiting around in tents or near cars.
The third edition of the Delhi Photo Festival foregrounds diversity of the photographic practice in India and the way in which young photographers expand their range by slowly departing from purely documentary photography. This extraordinary festival gives Indian photography its rightful place
FESTIVAL
Delhi Photo Festival
From October 30th to November 8th, 2015
Delhi
Inde
http://www.delhiphotofestival.com
