[Reader-list] Fwd: Invitation to a Talk on Capturing Calcutta- Politics of Seeing..(Mail2)

[OISHIK SIRCAR]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Drik India <drikindia at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 6:07 AM
Subject: Invitation to a Talk on Capturing Calcutta- Politics of
Seeing..(Mail2)
To: Drik India <drikindia at gmail.com>


Dear friend,

Sincerely apologies for cross posting !



Drik India cordially invites you to a talk by Ms. Ariadne Van de Ven on 23
February at the Conference Hall of Academy of Fine Arts, Cathedral Road,
Kolkata from 2 pm -5 pm.

* *

*Ms. Ariadne Van de Ven will speak on *

*'Capturing Calcutta? The Politics of Seeing'.*



If you are in the city Kolkata please drop in the programme.



ARIADNE VAN DE VEN
was born in Holland but has lived in London for the past 20 years.  She
earns her living in book publishing (PR) and has been visiting India since
1993.  Since 2002, she has visited Kolkata once a year for a two-week
holiday.  Here, she takes photographs in the streets with black-and-white
film and manual 35 mm cameras.  She is a tourist who has been investigating
the politics of being a white woman from the west walking around a city like
Kolkata with a camera around her neck.  Her multi-year project, called THE
EYES OF THE STREET: The Politics of Looking (Back) is ongoing.

- ----------------------

In 'CAPTURING CALCUTTA? The Politics of Seeing', Ariadne explores the
western photographic eye on India and the damage it does. According to her,
for even when taken with the best political or humanist intentions, the
famous photographs taken by the master photographers -- Henri
Cartier-Bresson and Don McCullin are just two -- these images often
reinforce the stereotypes that the west has of India.  An exotic paradise
full of graceful women in colourful saris, with elephants and gods, too, on
the one hand; and a desperate hell-hole in grainy black-and-white
unacceptably full of victims of poverty, hunger and disease on the other
hand. She considers that both extremes are true, of course, but three major
layers are missing:
1. The western view is so overwhelming that there is no space in the west
for representations from India itself.
2. The icons of exoticism and of destitution both show a timeless India:
without history, without politics and without western economic
responsibility.
3. The complexity that the westerners see, love and crticise in their own
societies, which they deny to the subcontinent and to 1 billion people.


Ariadne's argument is that photographs play a major role in this
stereotypical view - but  an under-recognised role.  She looks at images
from Cartier-Bresson and McCullin to examine its effects and impacts.


- -- 
Drik India
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Kolkata: 700025
Tel :    (+91 33) 2454 5596/2475 5391
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Email : drikindia at gmail.com
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Bangladesh.
Tel: + 880 2 9120125, 811 2954
Fax: + 880 2 911 5044
office at drik.net
www.drik.net
www.majorityworld.com
www.driknews.com



- -- 
OISHIK SIRCAR

Scholar in Women's Rights
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

60 Harbord Street
Room 016 B
Toronto, ON M5S 3L1

oishiksircar at gmail.com
oishik.sircar at utoronto.ca

416.876.7926