The Nazar Foundation for photography has organized the first Delhi Photo Festival, from October 15 to 28 at the Habitat Centre, in the heart of the Indian capital.
For its first edition, this international biennial has brought together 27 exhibitions, 33 projects and a dozen film and multimedia pieces. It will shine a spotlight on contemporary Indian and subcontinental photography.
Beyond the presence of renowned Indian photographers like Raghu Rai of Magnum, Pushpamala N., Ketaki Sheth and Dayanita Singh, whose work was recently shown at the Vienna Biennale and the Centre Pompidou, the festival is above all the occasion to discover talented new photographers who explore, in new and original forms, the tensions, violence and upheavals across their country.
Indian photography is slowly coming in off the street to tell more personal stories. The photographs of Sudharak Olwe relate the story of a Dalit (untouchable) couple plunged into the urban poverty of Mumbai. Splendour Solitary by Zishaan Akbar Latif depicts the archaic moral and community values of his grandfather. Amit Chakravarty’s Inner Circle tells the story of his parents’ departure from their native Calcutta to be close to their son in Mumbai.
Contemporary Indian photography shows, through a distanced lens, the story of communities, from Laura El-Tantawy’s portraits of farmers pushed to suicide by enormous debt, to the large community of India itself. Sumit Kathuria’s Bare Codes reflects on the digial identity numbers soon to be required for all Indian citizens, as well as the profound changes confronting Indian society today.
The first photo festival to be held in India, this event is also a veritable meeting place for young Indian photographers who are still afforded little access to exhibitions devoted to the photography of their country.
“I believe that photography is a democratic art form. That is why we have decided to hold the festival in an open space, the Habitat Centre, outside the traditional venues of galleries and museums, in order to share photography with as many people as possible,” declared the photographer Prashant Panjiar, who co-organized the festival with another photographer, Dinesh Khanna, and Alke Pande, director of the Habitat Centre’s Visual Art Gallery.
A resounding success.
Sybile Girault
[email protected]
Delhi Photo Festival 2011
October 15 – 28
India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India
