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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Photo Essay: A visual feast
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Photo Essay: A visual feast

The biennial Delhi Photo Festival starts this week

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When French photographer Olivier Culmann travelled across India from 2009-12, he was fascinated by the many small neighbourhood photo studios and their kitschy background sets. He set about taking self-portraits in these studios, fashioning himself in the pictures the way he saw customers doing. This quirky series, titled The Other, will be on display at the third edition of the Nazar Foundation’s biennial Delhi Photo Festival (DPF), which starts on 30 October at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA).

In addition to the main exhibition, there will be book launches, panel discussions, artist talks, and symposiums on photography and its role in the 21st century. Some of the exhibits are already on display at the 20 partner venues in the Capital.

The Nazar Foundation is a non-profit that works to promote photography and encourage photo-artists in India.

The festival received a total of 1,246 entries this year, including 733 from Asian countries and 396 from Europe. Three African countries also marked their presence. Some of the photographers were invited to exhibit their work, while others were selected by a jury. “Overall, 100 or so photographers are represented," says festival director and photographer Prashant Panjiar.

The 10-day festival is based on the theme “Aspire", a word that the team feels has found new relevance and complexity in an era of globalization. The previous, 2013 edition’s theme was “Grace", a tribute to the late photographer Prabuddha Dasgupta.

The festival aims to engage with the photo community and is “not just about putting up a show", says photographer Sumit Dayal, one of the curators at the DPF. As in previous editions, this year too the DPF will be conducting portfolio reviews—young photographers looking to get suggestions on building a well-crafted portfolio can get guidance from expert panels that consist of, among others, Raghu Rai and Magnum Photos’ Chien-Chi Chang. “We have done this before, but this time it’s become more structured," says Panjiar.

Besides traditional print exhibitions, the DPF will also show interactive digital exhibits, with musicians and poets performing live to a displayed set of photos. Poet and novelist Jeet Thayil’s band Still Dirty will perform to some of the displays, including Akanksha Sharma’s Fish Series, which captures, in monochrome, the detailed anatomy of a fish on a plate. And a photo-poetry event curated by Jesús Clavero Rodríguez from New Delhi’s Instituto Cervantes will see Avani Tanya and Gayatri Ganju interpreting the poetic works of a Spanish mystic, Teresa of Ávila, through their pictures.

The Other: Photographer Olivier Culmann uses the iconography in the background of various Indian photo studios to show how they help in crafting an aspirational self-image.
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The Other: Photographer Olivier Culmann uses the iconography in the background of various Indian photo studios to show how they help in crafting an aspirational self-image.
Behind The Veil: Shot over a span of 13 years, these images show strife-torn Afghanistan as a country with ‘normal aspirations’. Photographer: Nazes Afroz
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Behind The Veil: Shot over a span of 13 years, these images show strife-torn Afghanistan as a country with ‘normal aspirations’. Photographer: Nazes Afroz
Mädchenland: Photographer Karolin Klüppel documents girls from one of Meghalaya’s matrilineal tribes—the Khasis—in their immediate physical environment.
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Mädchenland: Photographer Karolin Klüppel documents girls from one of Meghalaya’s matrilineal tribes—the Khasis—in their immediate physical environment.

The Delhi Photo Festival will be held from 30 October-8 November. For details, visit www.delhiphotofestival.com

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vangmayi Parakala
Vangmayi Parakala is a multimedia journalist who focuses on literary culture, while keeping an eye on how the internet and mobile phones influence literature, photography, and communities. She also edits the Books and Relationships sections at Mint Lounge. Currently based in New Delhi, she is an alumna of the Department of English at the University of Delhi from where she earned her M.A, and of the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, from where she earned her M.S. degree.
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Published: 23 Oct 2015, 09:45 PM IST
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