Celebrating 15 years of art, Visual Art Gallery recently launched a two-volume book titled Voices and Images. The book Images traces the journey of photography in this digital era
In today’s digitalised world, photographs act as an integral source that connects the past and the present with the future. Tracing the Indian visual journey, Visual Arts gallery recently launched a book titled Images (part of the two volume book — Voices and Images), focusing on the various aspects of photography and its history.
The book features works by eminent as well as upcoming photographers, short history and essays on the subject. It also includes works by 11 photographers, who were awarded the India Habitat Centre fellowship between the year 2003 and 2014. “This book acts as a document that signifies photography as a tool of communication and cultural exchange and its growth in recent years,” states Alka Pande, who edited the book and adds, “India Habitat Centre was the first organisation to offer fellowship to photographers in the country, allowing them to develop their own photographic project with complete artistic freedom.”
Earlier, photography was used as a tool for identifying politics, gender and identity. But today it provides a holistic idea about every subject. Talking about why this book holds equal importance to text and images, Alka says, “Images alone might make a better looking book but would not leave a lasting impact. This book talks about how photography has evolved over the years, who were the people experimenting with this medium and elaborates on their way of practice. This is something I am sure an amateur photography enthusiast will also love to read through.”
The book focuses on various roles and genres of photography — from its inception, where landscapes and portraits were the muse to acting as a substitute to painting. Alka points out, “From the perspective of a fine-art practice, photographs guide the eye to notice things that the eye would normally not see. In its avatar as documentary, it works as a visual document; as reportage and war photography, it brings to the viewer images which try to create reality in absentia.”
This book also includes some interesting essays by photographers, museum directors and past winners like Bandeep Singh, Robert Pledge, Nathalie Herchdorfer and Ashim Ghosh. Each talks about a different aspect of photography and its journey. Nathalie Herchdorfer, director, Museum of Fine Arts, Le Locle, Switzerland in her essay analyses the works of each winner and how they reflect upon the transformation India is undergoing today. She states, “The achieve that India Habitat Centre has developed over 12 years provides a memory of Indian society as it stands now at the beginning of 21th century.”
Alka Pande in her essay, talks about the history of photography and how photography was embraced in India. “Both the ‘outsiders’ coming to India and the ‘insider’ took to photography like a duck takes to water. The immediacy of the medium, the power of the image itself had its patent attraction. From colonial to contemporary photographers, India continues to entice everyone,” she explains.
She also elaborates on how veterans like Raghu Rai, Dayanita Singh and Kishore Parekh used this medium as a documentation of growing India.
