Shifting gazes, reframing violence

Sudaroli, a repository of images for an academic report titled ‘Surviving Violence: Everyday resilience and gender justice in rural-urban India’, features clicks by photographer Priyadarshini Ravichandran.
A photograph by Priyadarshini Ravichandran at 'Sudaroli'
A photograph by Priyadarshini Ravichandran at 'Sudaroli'
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One in three women experience violence. We know that out of that, only 23% are even talking about it. Everyone is building and going on with their lives. Where is that resilience and how do you show it?” asks Swarna Rajagopalan, founder of The Prajnya Trust. The answer pervades Sudaroli (blaze, to burn brightly), a repository of images for an academic report titled ‘Surviving Violence: Everyday resilience and gender justice in rural-urban India’. The exhibit features clicks by photographer Priyadarshini Ravichandran. 

Against a painted background, two women grip each other’s hand, belongings heaped together in a checked sari, and a grasshopper balances on a blade of grass — these images radiate hope and burn with resilience. Sudaroli examines psychological, social and economic violence inflicted upon women and marginalised genders, and narratives of resilience; and this sudaroli lingers with onlookers, boiling deep inside them. Displayed at VR Mall, this series — part of Vaanyerum Vizhuthugal (Roots that Reach the Sky) curated by Jaisingh Nageswaran — urges audiences to look deeper.

How do you depict violence? The coverage of conflicts on broadsheets, crime on television, or thriller sequences in films delve into the bloody and bruised nitty-gritty, leaving scarce space for dignity, or resilience. “You should be able to represent violence in ways other than wailing women and flailing men, or locking women into positions of suffering alone,” adds Swarna. The project was an attempt to move away from “the pornography images of violence” and Priyadarshini was tasked with representing violence through her lens, beyond numbers, stories, and accounts. 

Priyadarshini explains, “We wanted to address the subtleties of violence that are never spoken about, the seemingly small occurrences that eat you up from the inside.” Without captions, these clicks are nearly subjective but the photographer highlights,

For this series, she had to assimilate the work the team had done over the years. Encountered with a new way of working, she mentions this collaboration was fruitful and meaningful. "I became a woman with a camera, not someone who is authoring this story alone. It feels powerful because this medium and this collaborative way of working channels a collective voice," she says.

Straying away from portraits, she notes that the images contain ambiguity and are open to dialogue.

An image of belongings heaped together in a checked sari
An image of belongings heaped together in a checked sari

As a child, Priyadarshini recalls abandoning painting the minute she mastered the mechanics of a film camera, gifted by an uncle. Snapshots of her mother, dog, immediate surroundings, and later, interpersonal relationships followed. “I learned that photographs can become placeholders for unexpressed feelings and layered with meaning if placed in the right context. This gives me the freedom to express what can be only felt and not articulated always with words. Photography also makes me step out of my cocoon and interact physically out in the world,” she says. 

Priyadarshini uses her lens to find herself. Interpersonal relationships are at the core of her work, whether unspoken tensions in the family, capturing interactions or meeting people who become close to her. With Sudaroli allowing a return to painting and a foray into mixed media, she says, she subverted the traditional Thanjavur and Mysuru schools that are reserved for the portrayal of royalty, saints or the gods. “If academia stays with the academic circles, or if photography stays with photographers, the learning seems limited. For me, it is in this exchange of worlds, this is where something more meaningful happens,” she signs off. 

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