Copyright © MurthyNAYAK Foundation
The January 2020 Photography / Education Symposium, sponsored by the MurthyNAYAK Foundation (MNF), in association with the Society of Photographic Education (SPE), was attended by representatives from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Belgium, Great Britian, and the U.S. Below is information on the attendees who were able to join us in Delhi.
Aditya Arya (Delhi)
Director Museo Camera; Trustee IPAF; Independent Commercial and Travel Photographer
Eminent commercial and travel photographer, Aditya Arya began his career in 1980, after graduating from the St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. His work has been published globally in books and travel magazines.
A former guest faculty member at Sri Aurobindo Centre of Art and Communication, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and Jamia Millia Islamia University’s Institute of Mass Communications, Arya mentored at Habitat Photosphere, a photography festival by Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre. He was Director of the Academy for Photographic Excellence (APEX), India’s leading photography academy, New Delhi. He served as juror for the National Art Exhibition 2014, organized by Lalit Kala Akademi, and other national shows.
Of recent years, Arya has been immersed in photographic conservation, establishing the India Photo Archive Foundation (IPAF) and the Neel Dongre Awards / Grants for Excellence in Photography. He opened Museo Camera in Sep 2019. With more than 3000 rare and iconic cameras and photographic equipment, the world-class museum traces the history of photography from the 1870s into the Digital Age.
In the fast-paced world of megapixels, Arya is immersing himself in the slowness of the analog processes, also mentoring many born-digital photographers and artists.
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Amarnath Praful (Gandhinagar)
Associate Faculty, National Institute of Design (NID), Photography Design
Amarnath Praful (b. 1992) is a visual artist, who primarily works with photography. An alumnus of the National Institute of Design’s master’s program in Photography Design, his practice explores performance, text, video, and found material – often guided by the landscape, folk traditions, cultural and political histories of Kerala, India. Praful’s pedagogical concerns are in the areas of representational politics, history of photography in the subcontinent, intermedia image practices, and cinema studies. Currently, he is serving as an associate faculty member at NID’s Photography Design Department and is leading coursework in the areas of photography and interdisciplinary media practices, art history, and cultural theory.
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Anita Khemka (Delhi)
Photographer, Educator, Researcher & MurthyNAYAK Foundation’s India Team
An English literature graduate, Anita Khemka (b. 1972) began photographing in 1996. Her oeuvre has largely been defined by social documentary and has been widely exhibited in India and traveled to Barcelona, Amsterdam, Bangkok, Frankfurt, Paris, Geneva, Stockholm, Helsinki, London, Houston, and Melbourne.
Anita’s work dealing with alternative sexuality was made into a German film, Between the Lines – India’s Third Gender in 2005. Sweet Sixteen, her portraits of sixteen-year-olds is included in a book, Imagining Ourselves. The series, Self-Portraits has been included in group exhibitions, Watching Me, Watching India, Fotografie Forum International, Frankfurt; Photoquai Biennal, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris; The Self and The Other – Portraiture in Contemporary Indian Photography, Palau de la Virrenina and Artium, Spain, Where Three Dreams Cross, White Chapel, London. With her work on Kashmir, she has collaborated with Imran Kokiloo, her partner (2016-ongoing). The first part of this work was exhibited at the FotoFest International in Houston, in 2018.
Anita headed the photography department SACAC (2015-2019) and is currently researching, writing, and conducting interviews for the MurthyNAYAK Foundation’s online resource, PhotoSouthAsia, launching in 2021. She is represented by PHOTOINK.
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Annu Palakunnathu Matthew (Kingston, RI, USA)
Faculty, University of Rhode Island; Member SPE
Annu Palakunnathu Matthew is Professor of Art at the University of Rhode Island. She was the Director of the Center for the Humanities 2014-19, and the Silvia Chandley Professor in Peace Studies and Nonviolence 2015-17. Her approach to teaching photography and time-based media has become increasingly more interdisciplinary with collaborations on climate change (with landscape architecture), portraiture with art history, and underwater photography with oceanography.
Annu’s recent solo exhibitions include the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada, Nuit Blanche Toronto, and sepiaEYE, NYC. She has also exhibited her work at the RISD Museum, Newark Art Museum, MFA Boston, San Jose Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts (TX), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), 2018 Kochi-Muziris Biennale, 2018 Fotofest Biennial, 2009 Guangzhou Photo Biennial, as well as at the Smithsonian. Grants and fellowships that have supported her work include a MacColl Johnson, John Guttman, two Fulbright Fellowships, and grants from the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts. Annu is represented by sepiaEYE, NYC.
She was in India for this Symposium while on a Fulbright and has been a member of SPE for twenty years, having given multiple presentations. She received the 2013 SPE Future Focus Project Grant.
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Bharat Choudhary (Delhi)
Faculty, Sri Aurobindo Center for Arts & Communications
Bharat Choudhary is an independent photographer based in London, UK. He grew up in Nigeria and later moved to India where he studied forestry management. He worked with CARE International for five years before moving to photography. As a photographer, he was mentored by Raghu Rai (Magnum Photos) at the Sri Aurobindo Center for Arts in New Delhi. Bharat received the Ford Foundation International Fellowship to study at the University of Missouri (USA), from where he graduated with an MA in Photojournalism.
Since 2011, Bharat has been documenting issues of Islamophobia and the racialization of Muslim communities in America, England, and France. Bharat has been a recipient of the Alexia Foundation Professional Grant and the Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography. He has thrice been a finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Grant. He has also been a finalist for the Aftermath Grant and the Philip Jones Griffiths Award. He was a juror for the 9th China International Press Photo Competition. His work has been published in TIME, The New York Times, Le Monde, International Herald Tribune, The National, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, La Repubblica, Philosophie, and the Sunday Times Magazine, among others.
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Chandan Gomes (Delhi)
Faculty, Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts & Communications and Ashoka University
Chandan Gomes studied philosophy at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi (2009). He is the recipient of the India Habitat Centre Fellowship for Photography (2011), Oslo University Scholarship (2012), Neel Dongre Award in Photography (2013), the Foto Visura Spotlight Grant (2014), and INK Fellowship (2016). Chandan was among the three finalists in the visual arts category for the prestigious Art Spectrum South Asia Awards (2019).
His artist book, This World of Dew, published by PHOTOINK, has been shown at the Benaki Museum (Athens), Parc Des Ateliers (Arles), and Zeytinburnu International Photography Festival (Istanbul), among other places. His photo essay, There are things I call home, was exhibited as part of Houston FotoFest 2018 Biennale. He exhibited his latest body of work, People You May Know, at Les Recontres d’Arles (July 2018), as part of the prestigious New Discovery Award; the exhibition was supported by PHOTOINK. Chandan also exhibited at Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2018). He was invited to Centre for Documentary Studies, Duke University (U.S.) for a solo exhibition and series of artist talks.
Chandan currently teaches at the Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts & Communications, Delhi, and Ashoka University, Haryana.
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Daljeet Wadhwa (Delhi)
Director, Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communications
Daljeet Wadhwa is Founding Director of Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communications (SACAC), New Delhi, which was begun with the aim of infusing spiritual and human values into media and arts education. She has steered SACAC over the last 15 years to evolve as an innovative and creative media school. Prior to SACAC, she co-founded the Electronic Media department at Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan, in New Delhi. Daljeet has a Master’s in Accounts and Statistics from Commerce College, Indore.
She has been an ardent follower of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from her formative years. Her quest has been to embody Sri Aurobindo’s dictum “All Life is Yoga.”
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Gayatri Nair (Chennai)
Trustee, CPB Foundation; Director, Operations & Education for the Chennai Photo Biennale
Gayatri Nair is a photographer, arts administrator, education and ARThinkSouthAsia Fellow based in Chennai, India. She is currently one of the founding trustees of the CPB Foundation, as well as Director of Operations & Education for the Chennai Photo Biennale (CPB). Over the last year, she has been actively engaged in teaching photography to students through workshops in schools, afterschool programs, and through art programs for students with special needs.
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Jeroo Mulla (Mumbai)
Visiting Faculty, Sophia Polytechnic and Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communications
Jeroo Mulla was formerly the Head of the Social Communications Media Department, Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai, where she taught film appreciation and photography, and supervised student documentaries for over thirty years. At the time of the Symposium, she was visiting faculty at Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai, and Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communications, Pune.
Jeroo was the first recipient of the Professor Satish Bahadur Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contribution to Film Studies in South Asia at the Alpaviram Film Festival at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad.
Jeroo was on the jury for the 2010 National Awards and subsequently has served on the selection committees for various film festivals including MAMI, MIFF, and the International Children’s Film Festival, Hyderabad. She was also on the jury for the 2015 Umrao Singh Sher Gill Award for constructed photography and the jury for student films for the 2018 Kashish International Film Festival.
She is an accomplished Bharatnatyam exponent, a disciple of the renowned guru Acharya Parvatikumar.
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Mahesh Bhat (Bengaluru)
Faculty, Srishti Institute of Arts, Design and Technology
Mahesh Bhat is a Bangalore-based photographer, filmmaker, educator, independent publisher, and environmental activist. India is his canvas. He has been photographing the life and times of the country and the subcontinent for the last 35 years. He has been commissioned by several media organizations and corporates from across the world for photographic and film assignments. He also has published several books and curated shows.
Bhat was a member of the founding team of The One School Goa, head of photography from 2013-15, and a visiting faculty member during the academic year of 2015-2016. At the time of this Symposium, Bhat was a member of the faculty at Srishti Institute of Arts, Design and Technology, Bangalore. He is one of the few photographers in India with more than three and a half decades of professional experience and several years of formal teaching experience.
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Max Pinckers (Conducting a workshop at SACAC) (Brussels, Belgium)
Independent Photographer, Doctoral researcher and lecturer
Max Pinckers (b.1988) is an artist based in Brussels, Belgium. His oeuvre explores visual strategies in documentary photography. Not believing in the possibility of sheer objectivity or neutrality, Pinckers advocates a manifest subjective approach, which is made visible through the explicit use of theatrical lighting, stage directions, or extras. Extensive research and diligent technical preparation are combined with improvisation to obtain lively, unexpected, critical, simultaneously poetic and documentary images. His work takes shape as self-published artist books and exhibition installations, such as The Fourth Wall (2012), Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty (2014), and Margins of Excess (2018).
At the time of this Symposium, Pinckers was a doctoral researcher and lecturer in the arts at the School of Arts / KASK, Ghent. He has received multiple international awards, such as the Edward Steichen Award Luxembourg (2015), and the Leica Oskar Barnack Award (2018). In 2015, he founded the independent publishing house Lyre Press.
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Meena Vari (Bengaluru)
Dean, School of Media Arts and Sciences; Dean, Contemporary Art and Curatorial Practice, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology; Coordinator, Center for Experimental Media & Arts (CEMA)
Meena Vari is Dean of School of Media Arts and Sciences and Dean of Contemporary Art and Curatorial Practice at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, as well as coordinator of the Center for Experimental Media & Arts (CEMA). She works to develop the practice of contemporary arts. Since 2004, she has been curating the ‘Srishti Festival of Ideas and Performance,’ inviting contemporary artists from India and abroad. A Chevening scholar on the Clore Leadership in the Arts Programme, (2013- 2014) UK, she received a Fulbright Scholarship, (2001-2002) USA.
Vari has collaborated with international art and design universities, and arts organizations like Art Design Future Lab, Shanghai, TATE UK, Kochi Biennale Foundation, Chennai Photo Biennale, Ars Electronica- Linz, and Center for Research in Sound Art Practice London, Transmediale Berlin, and more. As an independent curator, she is advisor and consultant for private art organizations and curated contemporary art from India in national and international venues, most recently prior to this Symposium, at Srishti Outpost – as collateral Site at the Kochi Muziris Biennale (2016), and National Gallery for Modern Art, Mumbai (2017). Her interest is in curatorial practice as a form of cultural place-making, experience, cognition, and knowledge making. (http://srishti.ac.in/)
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Nathaniel Gaskell (Bengaluru & Singapore)
Co-Founder & Curator of Photography, Museum of Art & Photography (MAP)
Born 1986 in London, UK, Nathaniel Gaskell lives and works between Bangalore, India, and Singapore. He is the co-founder and curator of photography at the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), Bangalore. He received his BA in Fine Art from the Arts University College, Bournemouth (2008), and holds a Master’s in Research for Cultural Studies from the London Consortium (2009). He is the author of Photography in India: A Visual History from the 1840s to the Present (Prestel / Random House) and Derry Moore: In the Shadow of the Raj (Prestel), among other publications. Past curatorial projects include Returning the Gaze: From the Colonial to the Contemporary (Jimei x Arles International Photography Festival, China); India Through the Lens (National Museum of Bahrain); Hikari: Contemporary Photography from Japan (Japan Foundation); and Norman Parkinson: Pink is the Navy Blue of India.
At the time of this Symposium, Nathaniel was working on a major survey exhibition of photography from India at the Monash Gallery of Art (MGA) in Melbourne, Australia.
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Navneet Kaur Ahuja (Delhi)
Photographer, Archivist
Navneet is a freelance photographer based in Delhi. She stumbled upon photography as a form of creative expression in 2010. She was part of the secretariat team of the Delhi Photo Festival since its inception in 2011, and worked for three consecutive Biennial Editions from 2011-2015. Over the past few years prior to this Symposium, she worked on several independent and collaborative projects ranging from community outreach and research-based photography projects, photo-books and designing photo-galleries in private spaces.
Navneet has also designed photo-visual based management training programs for corporate and is working on learning spaces for regular school and under-privileged children using the photography medium.
Following her interest in research, history, and archive, she returned to school in 2017-18, and studied Archives and Record Management at National Archives of India. She has been engaged in mapping the history of Faridabad City under the name of ‘FaridabadMemoir.’ Navneet strongly feels the need of an ‘Archive of PAN Indian Photographers’ that carries the essence of a collective and public enterprise and that would be her dream project to pursue.
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NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati (Kathmandu, Nepal)
Co-Founder and Festival Director, Photo Kathmandu; Co-Founder photo.circle and Nepal Picture Library
NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati is a photographer and curator based in Kathmandu, Nepal. She enjoys working across platforms to connect visual storytelling, research, pedagogy, and collective action on themes such as memory, patriarchy, power, and justice. In 2007, she co-founded photo.circle, a photography platform that has facilitated learning, exhibition-making, and publishing opportunities for Nepali photographers. In 2010, she co-founded the Nepal Picture Library, a digital photo archive that strives to document a public history of the Nepali people. NayanTara is also the co-founder and Festival Director of Photo Kathmandu, an international festival that takes place in Kathmandu every two years.
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Niyatee Shinde (Mumbai)
Independent Curator, Consultant, Archivist, Photo Historian, and Writer
Niyatee Shinde is an independent curator, consultant, and archivist, photo historian, writer on art and photography, and recognized appraiser of fine and decorative arts. She is a former research fellow, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; and was Director and Curator, Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Mumbai, for many years. There she curated several exhibitions of Indian and international artists, conceptualized and organized workshops on Indian folk and traditional crafts by master craftspeople. She co-founded Times Journal of Photography, TOI, Mumbai.
Niyatee has been invited as nominator for national and international photography awards, including the Leopold Godowsky Jr. Photography Award, the Robert Gardner Award, and thrice for the Hasselblad Photographer Award.
She conceptualized, researched, and compiled The Legacy of Raja Deen Dayal, photographs by Raja Deen Dayal, for IGNCA, New Delhi. Niyatee contributed to the Times of India and later wrote several critical features on art and photography for the Indian Express. Widely traveled, she has participated in several international discourses and seminars on photography. She has always believed in identifying, honing and showcasing talent from around the world; and so, has proactively championed several young artists and photographers.
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Rahaab Allana (Delhi)
Curator, Alkazi Foundation for the Arts
Rahaab Allana is Curator, Alkazi Foundation for the Arts in New Delhi; Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (London), and Honorary Research Associate at the University College, London. He has curated, contributed to, and edited several publications and exhibitions on South Asian photography and its trans-national histories, working with museums, universities, festivals, and other arts institutions, such as The Brunei Gallery (London), Rencontres d’Arles (Espace Van Gogh), The Folkwang Museum (Essen), The Photography Museum (Berlin), and the Rubin Museum (NYC), among others. Rahaab serves on the advisory committees / juries of various cultural fora, including the India-Europe Foundation for New Dialogue (FIND, Rome); the Prix Pictet Award (London / Switzerland / Paris); the Gabriele Basilico Prize in Architecture and Landscape Photography, among others. Rahaab is the Founding Editor of PIX, one of India’s first theme-based photography publications.
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Ram Rahman (Delhi)
Independent Photographer, Artist, Lecturer, Curator, and Designer
Photographer, artist, curator, designer, and activist Ram Rahman (b. 1955) initially studied physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He completed a degree in graphic design from Yale University’s School of Art in 1979.
Based in New Delhi, Ram has shown extensively in India and around the world, including at The Pompidou Centre (Paris) 2017, Houston Fotofest (2018), Gwangju Biennale (2018), and the Chennai PhotoBiennale (2019). He has curated shows for the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (Delhi), the NGMA (Mumbai), Photoink (Delhi), Bose Pacia, (NYC); and at Gallery 678 (NYC). His photographs are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), The Pompidou Centre (Paris), The Metropolitan Museum (NYC), and The Devi Art Foundation (Delhi). Ram has lectured on aspects of contemporary Indian photography and architecture at The Bhau Daji Lad Museum and Jnanapravah (Mumbai), MoMA (NYC), The Pompidou Centre (Paris), and conducted major lectures on Sunil Janah, Raghubir Singh, and modern architecture of New Delhi.
He is a founding member of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT), New Delhi, a leader in the resistance to communal and sectarian forces in India through its public cultural action. He is co-curator of the Sahmat retrospective exhibition, Smart Museum, University of Chicago, which opened in 2013.
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Ravi Agarwal (Delhi)
Ravi Agarwal, Photographer, Artist, Environmental Campaigner, Writer, & Curator
Ravi Agarwal has an interdisciplinary practice as a photographer artist, environmental campaigner, writer and curator. The photograph has been his main medium of work, which he has used widely in the documentary, conceptual, performative and staged formats. He explores key contemporary questions of labor, ecology, society, urban space and capital through photographs, videos, text, and installations. His work on labor, a collaboration with the anthropologist Jan Breman, has been published as a book Down and Out, Labouring Under Global Capitalism (OUP 2000).
Ravi regularly publishes photographic diaries as part of his work. He has shown very widely, including at the Havana Biennial (2019), Yinchuan Biennial (2018), Kochi Biennial (2016), Documenta XI (2002), the Sharjah Biennial (2013), etc. He curated the Yamuna-Elbe project, an Indo-German twin city public art and ecology project (2011), and Embrace our Rivers an Indo-European project in Chennai (2018), and has been the photography curator for the Serendipity Arts Festival (Goa, India) 2018 and 2019. He has served on several photography and visual art juries and committees, and has been a proponent for furthering photography education in South Asia. Ravi is the founder director of the environmental NGO Toxics Link and recipient of the UN Award for Chemical Safety and the Ashoka Fellowship. (www.raviagarwal.com)
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Rishi Singhal (Gandhinagar)
Head, Master’s in Photography Design, National Institute of Design
Rishi Singhal heads the Master’s program in Photography Design at the National Institute of Design (NID), Gandhinagar. He has studied at the Centre for Environmental Planning & Technology (CEPT), Ahmedabad, Visual Studies Workshop (VSW), Rochester, NY, and the College of Visual & Performing Arts at Syracuse University, NY.
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Sabeena Gadihoke (Delhi)
Facutly, AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia
Sabeena Gadihoke is professor at the AJK MCRC at Jamia Millia Islamia, where she teaches Digital Media Arts. She started her career as an independent documentary filmmaker and cameraperson and was a member of Mediastorm, India’s first women’s collective that made three films on religious fundamentalism. Gadihoke was a Fulbright Fellow at Syracuse University and has a PhD from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU. She has received grants from the Charles Wallace Trust (U.K.), India Foundation for the Arts, Pro Helvetica, the Swiss Arts Council, and the Majlis Foundation, Mumbai, for her research on Indian photography. Her film Three Women and a Camera won awards at the Film South Asia, Kathmandu (1999), and at the Mumbai International Film Festival (2000). This was followed by a book on India’s first woman press photographer, Homai Vyarawalla, Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla (Mapin / Parzor Foundation, 2006).
Sabeena is also a photo historian and curator, and at the time of this Symposium her most recent curatorial project was a retrospective of photographer Jitendra Arya at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in Mumbai and Bangalore, entitled Light Works (2017-18). Her more recent publications have focused on documentary studies, female stardom, popular visual culture, and photo history.
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Sanjeev Saith (Delhi)
Independent Photographer, and Editor of Books, Monographs, and Exhibitions
Sanjeev Saith has been associated with photography for over 40 years – initially as an active photographer (until 2002), and thereafter also as an editor of books, monographs, and exhibitions.
Sanjeev’s publications as editor / photo-editor include: Arvind Hoon’s Across the Street (2017), Ronny Sen’s End of Time (2017), Amit Pasricha’s India at Home (2016), Kanu Gandhi’s Kanu’s Gandhi (2015), Arvind Hoon’s Unsettled Waters (2014), Adil Hasan’s When Abba Was Ill (2014), Vicky Roy’s Home Street Home (2013), Mahesh Nair’s Iron Fist, Velvet Glove (2011), Prashant Panjiar’s Pan India (2009), Prashant Panjiar’s King, Commoner, Citizen (2007), and Sonia Gandhi’s Rajiv (1992).
His publications as photographer include A Journey Down the Ganga (1989), A Negative Year (2019), and Happy Goodnight (2019). Sanjeev’s personal work has been collected by the National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi), the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), and Art Heritage (New Delhi), among others. He has also exhibited at the Asian Arts Museum (San Francisco), the Photographers’ Gallery (London), and the Theatre Saint Gervais (Geneva).
Sanjeev has lectured and conducted workshops at many institutions across India, most notably at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy of Indian Administration, Mussoorie. He has served as a member of several juries, most recently, at the time of this Symposium, the Umrao Singh Sher-Gill Grant (2017) and the MurthyNAYAK Foundation’s Social Documentary Grant (2018), in association with SACAC.
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Sharbendu De (Delhi)
Faculty, Jamia Millia Islamia University and Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts & Communications
Sharbendu De is a lens-based artist, academic, and writer from India with more than 15 years of experience. He uses a host of storytelling approaches, including documentary and conceptual, as well as audio and video. De has an MA in photojournalism from the University of Westminster, London (2010), and a PG Diploma in Journalism from Indian Institute of Mass Communication (2004), New Delhi. Alongside his practice, at the time of this Symposium, he taught photography and visual arts at Jamia Millia Islamia University and Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts & Communications, New Delhi.
Sharbendu’s seven-year-long project, Imagined Homeland (2013-19), on the indigenous Lisu community of India, has been widely acclaimed and exhibited. His conceptual series, Between Grief and Nothing (2015-16), on trauma as an aftermath of the Nepal earthquakes, has been critically recognized for its innovative approach to telling stories of suffering. He has worked in seven natural disasters.
Sharbendu has also exhibited his work. He’s widely traveled across India, Nepal, Myanmar, and Bangladesh, and photographed stories on environmental conservation, human rights, gender, tribal rights, and more. His work has been featured in various national and international publications. Sharbendu mostly works for international nonprofits and cultural organizations. He lives in New Delhi.
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Shilpi Goswami (Delhi)
Independent Curator; Consulting Photo Archivist; Author
Shilpi Goswami is an independent curator currently working as a consultant with The Gujral Foundation, National University of Singapore Museum, Qatar Museums, “What About the Art?” and Gallery Nature Morte. She has two post-graduate specializations in publishing and museology.
Shilpi began her career as an assistant editor with the Leftward Books. She joined the art scene soon after. During her doctoral research in cultural studies, she worked for the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts as their archivist. Apart from archival work, research, and writing, her job extended to taking care of the academic publications, as well as co-curating exhibitions held at various national and international museums. Shilpi has been a curatorial consultant at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and a consulting photo-archivist for the Mehrangarh Museum Trust and the Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation. She co-authored Mastering the Lens: Before and After Henri Cartier Bresson in Pondicherry, and is a contributing author of Allegory and Illusion: Early Portrait Photography from South Asia, and Unveiling India: The Early Lensmen, 1850-1910, and more.
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Sohrab Hura (Delhi)
Photographer, Filmmaker
Sohrab Hura has published four books under his self publishing imprint UGLY DOG. His books Look It’s Getting Sunny Outside!!! and The Coast were shortlisted for the Aperture-Paris Photo PhotoBook of the Year Award (2018 & 2019), with The Coast winning the award in 2019. At the time of this Symposium, he anticipates publication of his fifth book – The Levee. His film, “The Lost Head And The Bird,” won the NRW Award as well as the special mention in the International Competition at the International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen (2018), and went on to win the Videonale Award at Kunstmuseum, Bonn (2019). His work The Levee was exhibited at the Cincinnati Art Museum. He is a participant at the Liverpool Biennial and lives and works in New Delhi.
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Suchitra Vijayan (New York, NY, USA)
Executive Director, The Polis Project, Inc
Suchitra Vijayan is a Barrister-at-law, writer, and photographer working across research, visual practice, human rights, and visual storytelling. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, Inc, a New York-based multidisciplinary research and journalism collective that studies cases of state violence and violations of political and human rights around the world. Polis is an interdisciplinary collective that includes scholars, documentary photographers, artists, filmmakers, coders, investigative journalists, and lawyers with a strong emphasis on visual practice.
As an attorney, Suchitra previously worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. She co-founded and was the legal director of Resettlement Legal Aid Project, Cairo, that gives legal aid for Iraqi refugees. As a graduate student at Yale, she was researching and documenting stories along the Af-Pak border. She writes about war, conflict, foreign policy, politics, literature, and photography. Her writings and photographs have appeared in GQ, Boston Review, Washington, Foreign Policy, NPR, Huffington Post, NBC, The Guardian, among other publications. Her book Midnight’s Border was forthcoming at the time of this Symposium. (www.suchitravijayan.com)
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Sudharak Olwe (Mumbai)
Independent Photojournalist; Director, Photography Promotion Trust
Sudharak Olwe is a photojournalist based in Mumbai. His work over the last three decades has included the documentation of atrocities on Dalits, series of exhibitions and books on Mumbai’s conservancy workers, intimate stories from the lives in Kamathipura – Mumbai’s seedy red-light district, a sensitive journey of women survivors of domestic violence, and a revolutionary story of midwifery in Jharkhand. Sudharak has served in prominent positions in the photography departments of leading newspapers including Indian Express, Times of India, DNA, and Lokmat. His work has been published in international publications including Indes France, Zeit, London Times, Harper Bazaar, EPA and others.
Sudharak has exhibited at numerous art galleries, arts festivals, and institutions. His exhibitions were well received in Sweden, Bangladesh, the Netherlands, the USA, Cambodia, Japan, and Germany. He was one of four awardees for the National Geographic’s All Roads Photography Program. In 2016, the Padma Shri, India’s 4th Highest Civilian Award, was conferred upon him by the President of India.
In 2005, Sudharak founded Photography Promotion Trust. The nonprofit organization that aims to use photographic skills to create definitive change in the lives of socially marginalized communities and promotes social documentary photography.
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Sunil Gupta (London, UK)
Professorial Fellow, University for the Creative Arts; Visiting Lecturer, Kingston University; Visiting Tutor, Royal College of Art
Sunil Gupta (b. New Delhi 1953), PhD (University of Westminster), was educated at the Royal College of Art and has been involved with independent photography as a critical practice for many years, focusing on race, migration, and queer issues. His latest show (with Charan Singh), Dissent and Desire, was at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India 2018, and his latest book is Christopher Street 1976, published by Stanley / Barker 2018, which was shown at Hales Gallery, New York 2019.
Gupta’s work has been seen in many important group shows, including “Paris, Bombay, Delhi…” at the Pompidou Centre, Paris 2011, and at the Tate Modern, and Tate Britain. He is a Professorial Fellow at UCA, Farnham, a Visiting Lecturer at Kingston University, and a Visiting Tutor at the Royal College of Art, London. He was lead curator for the Houston Fotofest 2018. His work is in many private and public collections including George Eastman House (Rochester, USA), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Royal Ontario Museum, Tate, Harvard University, and the Museum of Modern Art.
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Suryanandini Narain (Delhi)
Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Suryanandini Narain is Assistant Professor of Visual Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her doctoral thesis addressed the feminine figure in family photographs from Delhi. A recipient of scholarships from the Ford Foundation, INLAKS and ICSSR, she has also been involved as an assistant editor for various Marg volumes. She teaches courses on Indian visual culture, photography, aesthetic theory, and critical writing, and has published widely on photography, specifically on the feminine figure in Indian photographs, in journals and magazines such as Marg, Visual Anthropology Review, Economic and Political Weekly, Art India, and others. At the time of this Symposium, Suryanandini was working on the history of family photographs in India. She also has M Phil and Doctoral research students working on graphic novels, digital feminism, documentary photography, queer theory, and bazaar art.
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Tanvir Murad (Dhaka, Bangladesh)
Head, Photography Department, Pathshala South Asian Media Institute
Khandaker Tanvir Murad (b. Dhaka, Bangladesh, 1978) completed his degree in anthropology from Jahangirnagar University in 2003. His early career started at Drik Picture Library, working with Dr. Shahidul Alam. He also worked as the coordinator of Drik Gallery and Exhibition, where his specialization was in the design and execution of various exhibitions. He completed the Professional Photography Programme from Pathshala South Asian Media Institute and, in 2010, he began teaching photography there. He has completed ToT on Photography, teaching under World Press Photo in Amsterdam in 2012.
Tanvir is currently the Head of Photography Department at Pathshala. In 2018, under his supervision, Pathshala introduced the Bachelor of Social Science in Photography by securing affiliation with the University of Dhaka. He is also one of the governing body members of the affiliated programs. In 2019, he attained the Charles Wallace Professional Visits Programme (UK) and worked there on the development and implementation of a photography academic curriculum.
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Varun Gupta (Chennai)
Independent Photographer; Co-Founder / Director, Chennai Photo Biennale
Varun Gupta is a commercial photographer, serial-entrepreneur, digital ad man, and a lover of analogue photography who co-founded the Chennai Photo Biennale in 2015. His alma maters include Light & Life Academy, India, and the College of Wooster, U.S.
In 2006, he founded Travelling Lens – a company that conducted specialized photography workshops and holidays in remote areas of India, from 2007 to 2015. In 2010, Varun began work with Art Chennai, a city-wide arts event, managing their photography exhibitions with a focus on public engagement through which they organized large exhibitions in train stations and on beaches in Chennai. In 2015, he co-founded the Chennai Photo Biennale, along with Helmut Schippert, Director of the Goethe Institut Chennai, and has led the organization as Biennale Director since that time.
Photo Seva is one of his long-term portraiture projects, where he travels to make portraits of local communities across India with a large-format camera and B&W film. Varun is based in Chennai, India.
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Michael Famighetti (New York, NY, USA)
Editor, Aperture
Michael Famighetti is editor of Aperture magazine. In 2013, he organized a relaunch and reconceptualization of the magazine, which won a 2018 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. He is the recipient, with guest editor Sarah Lewis, of the ICP Infinity Award for Critical Writing and Research for “Vision & Justice,” the summer 2016 issue of Aperture. In addition to editing the magazine, Famighetti commissions and edits books for Aperture Foundation, including volumes by William Christenberry, Robert Adams, John Divola, Jonas Bendiksen, Kwame Brathwaite, Joel Meyerowitz, among others.
At the time of this Symposium, Michael was a visiting critic at Yale University School of Art and a participant in SVA’s Mentors program. His writing has appeared in Frieze, Bookforum, and Aperture, among other publications. A member of the American Society of Magazine Editors, Michael has been a guest reviewer and speaker at many international festivals and institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The New York Times; Vogue Italia; FOAM, Amsterdam; Art Gallery of Ontario; the Bamako Biennial, Mali; Kyotographie, Kyoto; Museet for Fotokunst, Odense, Denmark; and Fotografiska, Stockholm.
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Elizabeth Allen (SPE) (Phoenix, AZ, USA)
Board Chair, Society for Photographic Education (SPE)
Liz Allen became the curator of Northlight Gallery at Arizona State University in 1999, after earning an MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. She grew up in the southwestern U.S. and was happy to return to her home state. The exhibitions she curates demonstrate her profound interest in understanding, interpreting, and teaching the richness of photography as an evolving medium to an expanding community. The mission of the gallery under her direction has developed a dialog between established, emerging, and underrepresented artists working in a broad spectrum of photo-based media in collaboration with scholars also interested in challenging our perceptions of the human experience.
Liz has been an SPE member since 2001 and served as the Chair of the Women’s Caucus for more than a decade. At the time of this Symposium, she was serving as the Chair of the Board of Directors and had recently represented SPE in the Educators Forum at the Pingyao International Photography Festival.
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Lauren Greenwald (SPE) (Oceanside, CA, USA)
Board Member, Society for Photographic Education
Lauren Greenwald is a visual artist and educator working primarily in photography and video, exploring landscape, perception, and the experiential. Lauren received her M.F.A. in Studio Art, with a minor in Museum Studies, from the University of New Mexico, and her B.A. in Art History and French from the College of Charleston. During her time in New Mexico, she participated in Land Arts of the American West and the Collaborative Lithography program at the Tamarind Institute and worked with New Mexico arts institutions SITE Santa Fe and Radius Books. She is a regular contributor to Fraction Magazine and serves on the Board of Directors for the Society for Photographic Education (SPE). Lauren lives and works in Oceanside, CA, where she is Head of Photography in the Art Department at MiraCosta College.
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Vasant Nayak (MNF) (Baltimore, MD, USA)
Co-Director, MurthyNAYAK Foundation
Having studied communications media in Mumbai, India, after earning his B.A. in sociology at St. Xavier’s College, Vasant Nayak went to the United States to earn his Master of Visual Arts Degree from Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana.
Before his years engaged in an online venture, Vasant Nayak had a career as a professor, digital artist, and photographer. He created and directed a Master’s Degree in Digital Arts program at the Maryland Institute, College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, Maryland; one of the first of its kind in the U.S. Vasant has participated internationally in numerous group and solo exhibitions of his work throughout his art career.
Vasant’s interest in the digital arts planted other ideas he wanted to pursue. He worked on the development of custom-built software, marketing, branding, building an online community, and he pushed e-commerce into new realms.
Once financial success in business enabled the establishment of the MurthyNAYAK Foundation, Vasant began funding numerous photography related projects in the U.S. and India. He also began to photograph again. India remains the source of his inspiration. Vasant says, although his body resides in the United States, his soul dwells in India, and his mind traverses between the two.
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Shay Taylor (MNF) (Baltimore, MD, USA)
Board Member, MurthyNAYAK Foundation (MNF)
Shay Taylor (b. 1958) began ten years of fine arts education at the North Carolina School of the Arts (now UNCSA) for high school, and went on to earn undergraduate (BFA, General Fine Arts, 1982) and graduate (MFA, Digital Arts, 2000) degrees from the Maryland Institute, College of Art (MICA), Baltimore. Her chosen media primarily have been drawing and photo montage. Her work always tells a story. Shay worked closely with the Director of Art Education at MICA for seven years, steadfast as to the value of an education in the arts, based on her own experience as a student with learning differences. It was her skills in writing and design that set her ontrack for a career in marketing and communications, and she joined Vasant Nayak’s team in 1998.
Shay is on the board of the MurthyNAYAK Foundation and is involved in several projects, to which she is thoroughly dedicated. She makes her home in Baltimore. Over the years, she has had many opportunities to visit India with MNF. She fell in love with Mother India and her people from the first moment of her first visit.
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Senthil Kumar and Subramanya Shastry (MNF) (Chennai / Bengaluru, respectively)
MurthyNAYAK Foundation’s India Team
Senthil Kumar and Subbu Shastry are invaluable members of the MurthyNAYAK team in India. They help with setting up meetings with potential NGO partners, consulting on projects, and looking out for the safety and wellbeing of our often jet-lagged team from the U.S.
In his professional life, Senthil is lead attorney at Murthy Immigration Services, Pvt. Ltd., in Chennai, with satellite offices in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore. Subbu is in charge of educational programs that incorporate media at Agastya International Foundation, in Bangalore, with facilities located across India.
Photographers in their own right, Senthil and Subbu help to record events and projects for MNF.
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20 November
