„Contemporary Photography in India - A Critical Introduction“ 

40 minutes + 20 minutes Q&A,
moderated by Prof. Jörg Winde (Auslandsbeauftragter)
Note: This guest lecture is held in English

Location: Aula Design, MOP

This lecture presentation acts as a primer to contemporary photography practices in India. With the use of eclectic and specific examples, the first part of the lecture will aim to develop a thread looking at photography in the background of modernity in post-independent India and the later economic liberalization of the country in the 1990s. The latter part of the lecture will explore the present landscape of contemporary photography practice in the country. Often alternating between timeframes, we will be looking at how several aspects of representation, landscape, archive, community, family, identity, internet, and ecology are tackled by photography practitioners - responding to the many peculiar contexts and constant flux within which the country resides.

About our Speaker:

Amarnath Praful is a visual artist, writer, and teacher primarily working with photography. His artistic and research practice explores elements from performance, text, video, archive, and found material. The landscape, folk and oral traditions, modernities, and cultural-political histories of Kerala, India, often guide his work. His pedagogical concerns on which he has been writing and teaching are contemporary photographic practices, representational politics, the history of photography in the subcontinent, intermedia image practices, and cinema studies. He is a faculty member in the Photography Design master’s program at the National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar, India.

Photo credits:
(1) Amarnath Praful (Faculty, Photography Design Department, National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar, Indien)
(2-3) From the series People of Clay, Akshay Mahajan (2021)