In her foreward for this book, Anna Fox, Professor of Photography, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, UK, describes it as something quite different. Rather than begin with a nostalgic look at the history of photography in India, it instead examines the elements that make up the “…contemporary photography scene and showcase some of the pertinent narratives that are growing out of this new work….” And when it does look back at early photography on the subcontinent, it does so through a 21st century lens.
Contributors to the conversation in this volume hail from India and around the world. It is critical to draw from an expansive view when photography is heavily relied upon in documentary work and reporting, as well as art and advertising. It is also critical to educate the populace on reading photographs. Discerning when they are meant to tell the truth and when they are meant to lie; when they are evidentiary and when they push the real to evoke an emotion or fantasy. Photography in India is likely to become essential to scholars, as new voices are given a platform so that their voices may rise above the traditional din.
Copyright © 2021, PhotoSouthAsia. All Rights Reserved.
edited by Aileen Blaney
and Chinar Shah
Bloomsbury Visual Arts, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2018
ISBN: 9781350027886
20 November
