HYDERABAD: An exhibition of snapshots clicked by women photographers in association with Indian Photography Festival 2018 – Hyderabad is going on at Alliance Française Hyderabad. Organised by Antidote art and design, the International Women Photographers Association, MyArtSpy and Alliance Française Dubai in collaboration with International Women Photographers Association (IWPA) showcasing works of 10 photographers selected from the 60 short-listed candidates for the International Women Photographers Award.
In all, more than 600 women photographers from 82 countries submitted their entries to IWPA. The selected photographers are from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and South America. The 10 of them are: Manyatsa Monyamane (South African), Loulou Dak (Swedish), Annalisa Natali Murri (Italian), Estelle Lagarde (French), Laetitia Vancon (French), Tahmineh Monzavi (Iranian), Elahe Abdolahaba (Iranian), Alice Mann (South African), Shu-Chen Chen (Taiwanese), and Marylise VIgneau (French).
There’s no particular theme that runs through the photographs, what binds them to a similar rhythm is the music of life be it in Alice Mann’s poor drum majorettes of Dr Van Der Ross Primary School, Cape Town, known for gang violence and drug abuse or the portrait of a deformed man’s family life clicked by Constanza Portnoy. The photographs speak for themselves in shades of black&white and colour as well. Each face has a deep story buried in its expressions.
Tahmineh Monzavi’s work ‘Grape Garden Alley’ highlights the drug-addicts of Tehran living in slum areas. Their damaged souls peep deep from within their eyes. The photog has captured their thin frames dissolving in smoke behind which a sliver of life still lurks, leaps to carry the body forward and leave the shadows behind. At the same time in the works of Elahe Abdolahabadi, who lives in Neyshabur, one finds in black and white frames, a mosque with calligraphy juxtaposed with the scene of a few people washing dishes and lightening a gas stove at its entrance while a woman in scarf poses with her three kids at a distance.
Another photo by her shows three burqa-clad women standing near huge group-photos of men. There are four such photographs in the series which the artist calls: ‘An instant of time and place’. In another series by Marylise Vigneau the focus is on freedom of speech “in the interest of the glory of Pakistan”. The artist calls these ‘reasonable restrictions’ used against writers, activists, minorities, reporters to exploit faiths and opinions especially when it is the enforcement of Pakistan’s defamation laws to control freedom of expression..
The portrait photographs in this regard are taken in Lahore but with protected identity of those clicked. Each person in the frame is named ‘noor’ which means light pertaining to the theme the photog is exploring. Other series by different artists, too, have unique or similar stories to tell.
The exhibition is on till Sept 23
saima@newindianexpress @Sfreen