From March 21st to 30th, the Indian city of Pondicherry will host its first photo festival, Pondy Photo. Organized in partnership with the Delhi Photo Festival, Pondy Photo will feature 26 exhibitions in different venues throughout the city. This is a new event in Indian photography.
Following Delhi in 2011 and Bombay in 2013, now it’s Pondicherry’s turn for its own photo festival. The initiative is led by Kasha Vande, who hopes to bring photography outside of galleries into a public space.
“For the past year, we’ve organized a monthly exhibition in the old distillery,” says Vande. “These exhibitions were met with enthusiasm from the public and many photographers, which led us to organize this festival.”
The grand finale of Pondy Photo will be a group exhibition at the old distillery on the tribes of India. Featuring work by Pablo Bartholomew, Karen Dias, Srikanth Kolari and Amos Jaisingh, exhibition curator Yannick Cormier pays a wonderful tribute to these Indian communities resisting development in their country, often with difficulty.
Another thematic, group exhibition not to be missed is The Plot, created at the Delhi Photo Festival last September. Five Indian photographers explore cinema and its impact on the collective imagination: Kannagi Khana, who enchanted us in 2011 with his series on the slums of Ahmedabad; Pushpamala N. transforms herself into a Bollywood heroine; and Belgian photographer Max Pinckers uses the man in the street to create a scenario and has them pass behind the camera.
This promising first edition is supported by many photographers, including Varun Gupta, Amirtharaj Stephen, Waswo X. Waswo, Pablo Bartholomew, Prashant Panjiar, Nicolas Chorier and Sebastian Cortes.
“I started the festival, but Pondy Photo wouldn’t have been possible without them,” says Vande. “This festival is also theirs!”
FESTIVAL
Pondy Photo 2014
March 21 – March 30, 2014
Pondicherry
India
