nation states. chomsky

 Europe for centuries was the most savage place in the world. The level of savagery was so extraordinary that they developed both the means and the culture to conquer the world. And a large part of the reason for the savagery was the attempt to impose the nation-state, which is extremely unnatural; it breaks up people who have natural connections, it imposes unity on people who are not unified, whether by language or culture or anything else. It takes a lot of violence and brutality to impose a rigid frame on complex, fluid organisms like human societies. That ended in 1945, not because the conflicts were over, but because Europeans realized that the next time they played their favorite game of slaughtering one another, they’d destroy the world. 

Of course this same pattern has extended all over the world. I mean, wherever European colonialism went, nation-state systems were established with the same savagery and violence, and in fact most of the major conflicts in the world now flow directly from European—and I’d include North American here—efforts to impose highly unnatural nation-state systems. And this is the case also in the Levant. So I don’t think there are any natural lines you can draw in the Levant that make any sense from the point of view of people’s lives. 


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32016.htm

enlightenment ! bringing bijlee to the dark backsides of the world

                                                            ENLIGHTENMENT !

A photograph of the Earth illustrates the shift in special operations forces' missions over the last decade from the lit to the unlit spaces, Navy. Adm. Eric T. Olson, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, said Feb. 8, 2011, at the National Defense Industrial Association's 22nd Annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium. (Courtesy of NASA)

It is an old promise of the West to the ripped off  Rest. It lies at the bottom of all  those promises of "Civilization", "Democracy", "Development", "Modernity" and even Women Empowerment. It is now being delivered in secret by Special Forces 'working on the dark side" -as Dick Cheney wanted them to. They will bring light to the dark corners of planet Earth. Dark forces that american diplomats are now going to be working along with, as Clintonian SmART power.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/clinton-goes-commando/

"she described a vision in which shadowy U.S. and allied Special Operations Forces, working hand in hand with America’s embassies and foreign governments, together play a key role preventing low-intensity conflicts. And where prevention fails, the same commando-diplomat team goes on the attack, combining the Special Operations Forces’ fighting prowess with the language and cultural skills of State Department officers."


Those dark forces are looking for local Lawrences. comprador collaborators - cultural warriors to work for them against their own cultures.

http://www.soc.mil/UNS/Releases/2011/February/110211-02.html

Socom needs "Lawrences" of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, Indonesia and other places, Olson said. 

"Absolutely, enormously essential and valuable when you can find these kinds of people, because they are the key to understanding the place," he said. "Much better if we can recruit them from that place and make them part of us than ... train us to be part of them, "

Those dark forces are looking for local Lawrences. comprador collaborators - cultural warriors to work for them against their own cultures.

http://www.soc.mil/UNS/Releases/2011/February/110211-02.html

Socom needs "Lawrences" of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, Indonesia and other places, Olson said. 

"Absolutely, enormously essential and valuable when you can find these kinds of people, because they are the key to understanding the place," he said. "Much better if we can recruit them from that place and make them part of us than ... train us to be part of them, "

Over the past year, Socom has created cultural support teams made up of women that are deployed with tactical elements in all sorts of situations and remote environments, Olson said. 

The teams are trained in many advanced skills, but their primary value is that they give those tactical elements access to "the 50 percent of the population ... that we simply couldn't reach before," the admiral said. 

world tiger day. imagined and reality.

today is world tiger day.

                                                  where do most of them live now?
                          will they be just memories on walls? just backdrops and wallpaper?? 

the empire talks back.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/27/ruins-of-empire-pankaj-mishra

                               Victoria Memorial . Calcutta/Kolkatta . the empire talks back

"The British empire was "despotism with theft as its final object". So what has made imperialism an intellectual fashion in our own time, reopening hoary disputes about whether it was good or bad? After five years as a colonial policeman in Burma, where he found himself shooting an elephant to affirm the white man's right to rule, Orwell was convinced that the imperial relationship was that of "slave and master". Was the master good or bad? "Let us simply say," Orwell wrote, "that this control is despotic and, to put it plainly, self-interested." And "if Burma derives some incidental benefit from the English, she must pay dearly for it." Eric Blair/George Orwell


a Kipling-esque rhetoric about bringing free trade and humane governance to "lesser breeds outside the law" has resonated again in the Anglo-American public sphere. Even before 9/11, Tony Blair was ready to tend, with military means if necessary, to, as he put it, "the starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant" around the world. His apparently more intellectual rival Gordon Brown urged his compatriots to be "proud" of their imperial past. Sensing a sharper rightward shift after 9/11, many pith-helmet-and-jodhpurs fetishists boisterously outed themselves, exhorting politicians to recreate a new western imperium through old-style military conquest and occupation of native lands.

intervene or get the image

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jul/28/gutted-photographers-who-didnt-help 

It is an old battle back  in the limelight again.  A TV camera crew in  Assam preferred to  get their footage instead of intervening to stop  the molestation of a young girl.I wonder if that molestation was specially arranged for them? Did they even arrange it themselves??

Should  photographers drop their cameras and help their subjects or should they get the image?  Is doing that latter selfish and sinful ?  Does emotional involvement mean that " you can't focus if you have tears in your eyes"? I remember the quote but not, sadly, who said it.

 I had once asked Homai Vyarawalla  if she had ever faced a situation where she had dropped her camera to help her subjects. And I had used that quote. "In my days " she said firmly "we didn't focus". Her generation had relied on depth of field instead of depth of feeling . f 22 or 32 or even f 64 meant a 20:20 photographic vision. I was reminded of that conversation this morning  when i read the Guardian article . I was also reminded of  November 1984 and the anti Sikh riots  in Delhi - of the pictures I shot and the  picture I did not shoot.

The picture I did not shoot would have been iconic. A great shot of a bearded Sikh being beaten up (or worse )  against the backdrop of the  Central Vista.  I had put my camera away and threatened to call the police  when a bunch of goons said they would  beat the man up  just for the photograph.  I guess they were used to the idea of acting for the camera. too used to making  up events for the media. Too many 'News' cameramen and journalists  actually  used to  cover  "demonstrations" specially arranged for them.

Today's camera technologies mean that photographers doesn't have to focus.Their  cameras do it for them. Does that mean that they  can now have tears in their eyes and still get the photographs?  Or is that rush for the image  sinful enough to even mean suicide? Something that a Pulitzer prize winning  Kevin Carter is supposed to have done after he came under attack for his 1993 pictures of famine in Sudan.

lots of questions. would love some answers. 

glocalisation . culture wars,art and self censorship

I went for the launch of  two books yesterday. One of them  was supposed to be a record of an international conference on" Glocalisation of Art". I had, after all,  been involved with is as an invited interlocutor.  The launch was a sad  display  of where the glocalisation projects, in our part of the world, stand.They seek to make the local global without understanding the  hard politics of Globalisation.

The Danish ambassador was sensitive enough to point out that his embassy backing was restricted to the funding and that the rest had been left to the funded  organisation. The organisation then, is the one that was too sensitive  to  the sensitivities of funding bodies ( and their own desire for future funding ?). It has totally removed any record  of any "interlocution" that happened during the conference.   It censored itself.   It did not mention ( even in the book ) that there had been any interlocutors , any challengers and  challenges to the  global art agendas the conference was supposed to glocalise.

Gone, into thin air, was the attempt one had made to widen the debate by pointing  to the real agendas of international funding of  local cultural bodies. The smART power that Hillary Clinton so proudly put into place in the State Department.   Smart power that first world funding uses to create a cultural comprador class. Smart power that now ensures the diplomats work seamlessly with the needs of their  nations' armies by  adding soft power to their armed hardpower thrust into the world.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/clinton-goes-commando/

That address was to that nation's Special Forces - the shadow warriors who work in the dark shadows of so many endless  wars throughout the world. Without a quetioning mind the local artists  run the danger of becoming silent  collaborators.Just one of  of those " Special Forces"

I remember  quoting from an american Defence paper at the conference.  as a warning . as an attempt to wake artists up  to  viewpoints they do not normally get to see.

"There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.  "
That is the opening  quote of an essay by  a Major  (P) Ralph Peters "assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, where he is responsible for future warfare. Prior to becoming a Foreign Area Officer for Eurasia, he served exclusively at the tactical level. He is a graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College and holds a master's degree in international relations."

Multiple conflicts. Constant war. A fair amount of killing  in wars that seek " Full Spectrum Domination". Domination that "seeks control of all international commons - including Space  and Cyberspace. Culture not excluded"


The current "War on Terrorism " has been described by the  US Marines as Fourth Generation Warfare. Warfare that sees "the whole of an  enemy's society as the battlefield" - where action will occur concurrently . throughout all paricipant's depth, including their society , as a cultural, not just a phyusical entity. Where targets will include such things as a population's support of war and the enemy's culture."


Culture has always been a battlefield.  It is time the Art world woke up and stopped self censorship for just firang funding or even future firang funding. There is no real future in that. Not for Glocal Art.Not for local cultures.

links to follow.

http://www.state.gov/j/cso/releases/other/189343.htm

http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/parameters/Articles/97summer/peters.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

photography and censorship

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3679583.ece  This article brought back memories from more than 20 yrs ago.  Memories of official censorship of memory making.Photographic memory making, to be exact . Memory that is not part of National myth making. Memory that challenges the creation of that Myth.


That censorship  had led to photography being officially recognized as  an ART . A Fine Art . Art spelled with a capital F . It was a trade off  that I  now regret  being a part of. One had, rather naively, thought that,  as an Art, photography  would not be censored - that its move from under the thumb of   the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting  to the Dept of Culture would give a freedom that comes from status  and the move to the much more restricted  space of the Gallery. From the larger , more influential and effecive Media spaces to the rarer, sanitised spaces and decontextualising walls of  the  Museum . 

Censoring photographs is an universal phenomenon.  Every country does it.  In one way or another. At on time or the other. Even the leaders of the "Free World". The ones who push civilisation, freedom and democracy in the world.  Just remember Mcarthyism, Abu Ghraib and the continuing attack on Wikileaks after they showed the 'Collateral Damage' video  of an American massacre in Iraq. 


http://www.himalmag.com/component/content/article/3417-photo-power.html.  this is a link to a short article i wrote for Himal . A more carefully thought out  and longer essay needs to be written. Desperately.

What is it about photography that draws in the big guns of the world's babus ?

colonialism ! its cruelty continues.

Many early campaigns in India in the 18th century were characterised by sepoy disaffection. Britain's harsh treatment of sepoy mutineers at Manjee in 1764, with the order that they should be "shot from guns", was a terrible warning to others not to step out of line. Mutiny, as the British discovered a century later in 1857, was a formidable weapon of resistance at the disposal of the soldiers they had trained. Crushing it through "cannonading", standing the condemned prisoner with his shoulders placed against the muzzle of a cannon, was essential to the maintenance of imperial control. 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/19/end-myths-britains-imperial-past?intcmp=239

                                                    THE RESIDENCY. LUCKNOW


"We insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers." So David Lloyd George explained the British government's demand at the 1932 World Disarmament Conference to keep the right to bomb for "police purposes in outlying places". Airpower had shown its value in spreading what Winston Churchill, when defending in 1919 the use of poison gas against "uncivilised tribes", had called "a lively terror". Richard Gott shows how a hundred years earlier more hands-on means were used to similar ends: the heads of rebel slaves in Demerara in 1823 and Jamaica in 1831 were cut from their bodies and placed on poles beside the roads. The mutilation of the corpses of the defeated never quite goes out of fashion."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/07/britains-empire-richard-gott-review?intcmp=239

globalisation beast

"William Coleman, in his essay ‘Globalization, Imperialism and Violence’ opines that America, as an empire, has used its power, especially military power, to speed up globalisation which has produced ‘networked’ society, global business and cultural networks which, in turn, have produced new forms of violence and networks of ‘uncivil’ society as a way to combat these forces of globalisation. Since many aspects of globalisation threaten the traditional ways of life especially in vulnerable developing societies, groups among them organise themselves into networks of ‘uncivil’ society as the only defence against these globalising forces. The main culprit, according to Coleman, is America with its 737 bases outside its territory and its ‘militarism’ as opposed to ‘military’."


http://www.thehindu.com/arts/books/article3674691.ece

          kunming , china  "  of global business, networked societies  and cultural colonialism

james holmes: reel life - real life: maya makes the man !

Nolan’s Batman trilogy has proceeded on the assumption that what happens on the screen in some way reflects what’s happening in the world, that fantasy and reality are mutually permeable—this is what makes his movies function as political allegories, if at times muddled ones. Why shouldn’t we assume the reverse is true as well—that the grim, violent fantasies we gather to consume as a culture have some power to bleed over from the screen into real life?

– from: Why There? We can’t blame The Dark Knight Rises for the Aurora shooting. But we also can’t ignore the parallels between Christopher Nolan’s grim world and our own. Dana Stevens (Slate)

http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2012/07/james-holmes-let-the-mythologizing-begin/

                                                                        MAYA MAKES THE MAN 
                                                             illusion , image and the ideas of 'self '

                                             photos: The Satish Sharma Collection

"indian" food ?

"And the final step is the retail, where food reaches our table, Wal-Mart wanting to have foreign direct investment in retail. A big issue in India's parliament, a very big issue on the streets of India. So from the seed to the table, corporations are saying, "We want to be the only players." Five in seed, five in grain trade, five in processing, and five in retail. That is a corporate hijack of our food and a corporate dictatorship over our food system."


http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10456-moyers-vandana-shiva-on-the-problem-with-genetically-modified-seeds

                                            "PREPARE TO GET ASSAULTED"

women in india.

"Sheetal Sharma and Bitopi Dutta, the young feminists from the North East Network, complain that modern women are divided into "bad" and "good" according to what they wear, whether they go out after dark and whether they drink alcohol. "We are seeing a rise of moral policing, which blames those women who are not seen as being 'good'," says Sharma. "So if they are abused in a pub, for example, it's OK – they have to learn their lesson," adds Dutta, 22, who grumbles that young women such as herself cannot now hold hands with a boyfriend in a Guwahati park, let alone kiss, without getting into trouble with the moral police, if not the real police."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/23/why-india-bad-for-women

                                                           bharathia  naari 

super star or super chamcha

“No, Andrea. Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.” -  bertolt brecht.

image from my 1997 exhibition" DEconstructing  the Polician". the poster was pasted on a cemetery wall . the cemetery is not far from 10 Janpath. the super star was also a super congress chamcha.

our small shops or FDI

"After the TIME magazine came out with a cover story calling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh 'underachiever' (which ostensibly was to provoke the PM to go in for FDI in retail), it was surprising to see President Obama telling India what is good for us."

                                                http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.in/

trickle down???

"£6.3tn of assets is owned by only 92,000 people, or 0.001% of the world's population – a tiny class of the mega-rich who have more in common with each other than those at the bottom of the income scale in their own societies."


"These estimates reveal a staggering failure: inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people," said John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network. "People on the street have no illusions about how unfair the situation has become."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/21/global-elite-tax-offshore-economy

premodern that is sooo postmodern

                                                          Bhaktapur, Nepal

bliss and chromophobia

"The central argument of Chromophobia is that a chromophobic impulse - a fear of corruption or contamination through color - lurks within much Western cultural and intellectual thought. This is apparent in the many and varied attempts to purge color, either by making it the property of some "foreign body" - the oriental, the feminine, the infantile, the vulgar, or the pathological - or by relegating it to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential, or the cosmetic.

Chromophobia has been a cultural phenomenon since ancient Greek times; this book is concerned with forms of resistance to it. Writers have tended to look no further than the end of the nineteenth century. David Batchelor seeks to go beyond the limits of earlier studies, analyzing the motivations behind chromophobia and considering the work of writers and artists who have been prepared to look at color as a positive value. Exploring a wide range of imagery including Melville's "great white whale", Huxley's reflections on mescaline, and Le Corbusier's "journey to the East", Batchelor also discusses the use of color in Pop, Minimal, and more recent art."

                                                                    the amazon intro to david batchelor's book. 




BLISS ! Is shooting in a part of the world which does not believe in chromophobia.  a world which  has no fear of colour. loves it.  uses it. blisses out on the hotness of  it. 

of questions and answers -sawaal ,jawaab

below the compassioinate, strangely blue, eyes of the buddha  i see a question mark.  " who is asking?"  after all, was  the his deepest answer to the eternal questions. tis the questions that finally matter.

fighting for our futures

Pentagon planner, Lt. Col. Ralph Peters:

"The de facto role of the United States Armed Forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing. (Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph?" 1999,

chasing shadows.

                                                      chasing shadows in sydney. 

where waters meet. not for too much longer

at the triveni, allahabad.  where waters meet. long dead ones too. for how long though, will these waters flow? how long before the deaths of water wars follow ?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/Tibetan-glaciers-retreating-earlier-study-flawed-Report/articleshow/15019804.cms

of lilypads. american and chinese

“To project its power,” he says, the United States wants “secluded and self-contained outposts strategically located” around the world. According to some of the strategy’s strongest proponents at the American Enterprise Institute, the goal should be “to create a worldwide network of frontier forts,” with the U.S. military “the ‘global cavalry’ of the twenty-first century.”

lily pads -- which are actually aquatic weeds -- bases have a way of growing and reproducing uncontrollably. Indeed, bases tend to beget bases, creating “base races” with other nations, heightening military tensions, and discouraging diplomatic solutions to conflicts. After all, how would the United States respond if China, Russia, or Iran were to build even a single lily-pad base of its own in Mexico or the Caribbean?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31885.htm

                                                      lily pond in kunming, china.  

if your pictures are not good enough--

"If your pictures are not good enough, you are't reading enough". TOD PAPAGEORGE

great updating of Robert Capa's  "If your photographs are not good enough, you are not close enough."

Photographic Space and the Indian Portrait Studio

According to Satish Sharma portrait photographs in India are "dictated by a belief system that sees the world as maya – an illusion. The photograph now becomes an illustration of an illusion. It draws not just on a religious belief in maya but seems to see life as a leela – a play – enacted theatre" (Sharma 1997: unpaginated).

Photographic Space and the Indian Portrait Studio Wendy Garden University of Melbourne http://www.doubledialogues.com/archive/issue_seven/garden.html Figure 4 Unidentified man, Unknown studio, c1970s Courtesy Satish Sharma

bio data

SATISH   SHARMA                               email:  rotigraphy@gmail.com

      

The Residence,

Australian Embassy

Bansbari , Kathmandu

NEPAL            Tel:  0097-1 43701972

Worked as a freelance photojournalist for leading Indian magazines and

newspapers since 1975 and as documentary photographer for major

international institutions like UNICEF.

 Now an independent photographer, writer, .cultural critic, and curator who has published and exhibited internationally.

Exhibitions: 

One Man Shows:

Siddhartha Art Gallery, Kathmandu - September 2011

India Habitat Centre New Delhi – January 2007

Silkroad Photo Gallery, Tehran - November 2005  

"Australia: Portraying a Nation"

India International Centre and Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi - March 1999

Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath , Bangalore - September 1999

Lalit Kala Akademi, Chennai - October 1999

Birla Academy of Art and Culture , Kolkatta - November 1999

Nehru Centre, Mumbai - January 2000

Bangladesh Shilpikala Academy, Dhaka  - April 2000

DeConstructing the Politician:

Eicher Gallery, New Delhi – 1997 

Centre for Photography as a Fine Art, NCPA, Mumbai - 1990

Cholamandal Artists' Village, Cholamandal - 1987

Ashram Gallery, Pondicherry and Auroville - 1987

Sakshi Gallery, Madras - 1987  Art Heritage Gallery – 1986

Select Group Shows:

Separating Myth f rom Reality , -  Kathmandu - 2009

Second Fukuoka Asian Art Triennalle, Fukuoka Japan - 2002

Peter Beard Gallery, Netherlands   - New Delhi - 2000

Woman Goddess, British Council New Delhi - 2000 and ICAC- New York 2001

Boxwallahs, an Indo-Austrian Installation Project, New Delhi - 1999

The Edge of the Century, Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi - 1999

Black and White, an exhibition that toured India though 1997, USA in1998

Out of India, Queens Museum, New York - 1997

Project Punjab, National Gallery, New Delhi - 1995

Images and Words: Artists against Communalism, a SAHMAT exhibition that

toured India  and was shown in 27 towns and cities - 1991 and 1992

Artists Alert, Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi - 1989

Working News Cameramens' Association Exhibition, AIFACS, New Delhi-1989

Pratibhimba an Exhibition of Indian Photography, Pushkin Museum, Moscow -

Festival of     India in the USSR - 1988

The Endless Wheel, an Exhibition of 16 Indian Photographers that traveled

through Germany, Switzerland and Sweden - 1987/1988

Exhititions Curated:

Street Dreams:  for the Shoreditch Foto Biennalle, London. The exhibition

travelled      through Europe from 1997 through 1999 and was shown in major

institutions like the    National Museum of Photography, Film and Television

in Bradford.

 Curated an exhibition of Indian Studio Portraits for Face to Face: an

Exhibition on Portraiture at the Netherlands Foto Instituit , Rotterdam

- 1997,

Space and Identity an exhibition on Indian studio photographs for Gallerie in der

Brotfabrik, Berlin   as part   of a series of exhibitions that looked at the

photographic construction of identity -1996

Curated 'Indian Studio Photography ' for Fotofeis - the Scottish

International Festival of Photography - 1995

Coordinated 'Project Punjab' for the Forum of Contemporary Photographers,

New Delhi - 1994

Curated the Indian Section of an exhibition on Family Snapshots from Germany

and India    at  the Photography Gallery of the Max Mueller Bhavan, New

Delhi - 1994

Curated an enlarged exhibition of Homai Vyarawalla's work for the Center of

Photography    as a Fine Art, NCPA Bombay - 1994

Curated the first retrospective exhibition of  Homai Vyarawalla , the first

woman photojournalist   in independent India at the Photography Gallery ,

Max Mueller Bhavan ,   New Delhi - 1993

PUBLICATIONS:

Photographic Books, Catalogues and Journals:

I I C  Quarterly: India International Centre Journal, New Delhi -2006

Visual Arts: The India Habitat Centre’s Art Journal, New Delhi –2006

Visual Arts: The India Habitat Centre’s Art Journal, New Delhi -2003

Imagined Workshop catalogue of 2nd Fukuoka Triennale, Fukuoka - 2002

Australia: Portraying a Nation, New Delhi -1999

Mappings: Shared histories... A fragile Self,  Eicher Gallery New Delhi -

1997

Street Dreams:  a book published by Booth Clibborn Editions, London – 1997

 'Die Konstrucktion Des Roames' catalogue published by Gallerie in der

Brotfabrik,            Berlin  - 1997

Fotofeis 95   a catalogue published by the Scottish International Festival

of Photography   Edinburgh - 1995

Taj Mahal   A travel book on Agra and Fatehpur Sikhri, published by the

Guidebook Company, Hong Kong - 1992

Images and Words - Artists Against Communalism published by Safdar Hashmi

Trust,

New Delhi - 1992

Actors, Pilgrims, Kings and Gods - the Ramlila of Ramnagar, with text by

Anuradha Kapur, published by Seagull Books, Calcutta

Artists Alert, published by SAHMAT, New Delhi -1989

Pratibhimb: Photography in India, published by the Festival of India in the

USSR - 1987

Das Endlose Rad, Photographie in India, published by Uniionsvertag Zurich

-1987

Art Heritage Catalogue - 1985/86 published by Art Heritage New Delhi - 1985

Writing On Photography:

Exhibition Catalogues:

India Awakens: Kunst der Gegenwart, Essl Museum  -2010

Essays for Australia: Portraying a Nation, catalogue printed by the

Australian High Commission, New Delhi - 1999

Mappings: Shared Histories... a fragile self, catalogue published by Eicher

Gallery, New Delhi- 1997/98

Introductory Essay for Street Dreams, a book /catalogue published by Booth

Clibborn Editions and the Shoreditch Foto Biennale, London -1997

Essay 'Rotigraphien' for Die Konstrucktion des Raumes, the catalogue

published by Gallerie in der Brotfabrik , Berlin- 1997

Essay "Hidden Histories: The Colonial Encounter" for  ' Shifting Focus-

Photography in India 1850-1900 " published by the British Council - 1997

Catalogue Essay for Sheba Chaachi’s photographic installation at the Max

Mueller Bhavan , New Delhi- 1994

Catalogue Essay for Raghu Rai's exhibition of photographs at the Max Mueller

Bhavan, New Delhi - 1994

Catalogue Essay for Homai Vyarawalla's exhibition of photographs at the Max

Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi - 1994

Catalogue Essay for the  Lalit Kala Akademi's 2nd Biennalle of Creative

Photography - New Delhi- 1993

Select articles on Photography:

Imperial Delhi: imagined, imaged iconicized, IIC Quarterly, New Delhi, 2006

Drishti: Of Photographic Perception and its Management, Visual Arts Journal

-   New Delhi, 2006

'Rotigraphy: Indian Street Photography', Art Asia Pacific no: 13 - Australia

  1997

Articles on Homai Vyarawalla and Sheba Chachhi, Photographers International

- Taiwan  – 1997

'A continuing circus of Prejudice' - full page review of Lindsay Hebbard's '

Cultural Portrait of India' an exhibition of photographs that toured the Us

as a celebration of 50 years of Independence,  The Economic Times , New

Delhi - 1995

Images of Imperialism', a look at how the India was framed by the Empire,

India Magazine, November 1995, New Delhi.

Rotigraphy: a vernacular Indian Vision, Cover Story for India Magazine,

September 1995, New Delhi.

'Form Minus Critique' review of Raghubir Singh's exhibition of his Bombay

Photographs,The Economic Times, 12 Feb 1995 - New Delhi.

'Dreams that Money can Buy '- a short essay on Popular Indian Photography,

Creative Camera - Dec/Jan 1994, London.

'Self and the Other' essay on Sheba Chhachhi's photograhic installation,

The Economic Times - 4th Dec 1994.

'Beyond the Margins of Vision' - review of Raghu Rai's Exhibition and book

on Delhi, The Economic Times - 30th Jan 1994.

'On Photography's Futile Dreams', review of exhibition by Pablo Bartholomew

in The Economic Times - 23rd Jan 1994.

'It Didn't quite Click, Critique of the IGNCA's exhibition of Raja Deen

Dayal;s photographs in The Economic Times - 16th Nov 1993.

'The Picture without the View’,  review of the Lalit Kala Akademi’s 2nd

Biennalle of Creative Indian Photography in The Economic Times - 25th Sept

1993.

'Honouring the "Mother" of all Indian Photographers' a tribute to Homai

Vyarawalla in The Economic Times - 12th Sept 1993.

'The Woman who Shot the Best of Them'   profile of Homai Vyarawalla –

  The Economic Times - 31st May 1993.

'Buried Images of Bigotry' Photographs and essay on the victims of the 1984

anti Sikh riots and photographic self-censorship, The Economic Times -28th

Nov 1992.

 Select Bibliography:

Prop Art, Seen- the Canon world of Photography no: 10, 1999, Amsterdam 1999

Rustom Bharucha, In the Name of the Secular, Oxford University Press,

New Delhi -1998

Geeti Sen, 'The Power of the Photograph' The Pioneer, New Delhi - 1997

Santawana Bhattacharaya, 'Framing the Framers’ The Indian Express - 1997

Santawana Bhattacharaya, 'Photo Identity' The Indian Express-1997

Arno Haijtema, 'Een roti voor een foto' de Volkskrant, Rotterdam -1997

Jahmarkt- Fotos als Spiegel der Kuiltur, Die Welt,Berlin -1996

Sadanand Menon, 'The Peeling Face of Politics’ The Economic Times- 1992

Sadanand Menon, 'Of Culture and Commissars'  The Economic Times - 1991

Nyatee Shinde , 'Not to be Laughed at', The Times of India , Bombay - 1990

Hemant Morparia, 'Images from the Real World' The Independent - 1990

Geeta Natarajan, Dotted with Poignant Antithesis' Free Press Journal - 1990

Rukmani Anandani, 'In Camera' Sunday Mail, New Delhi  - 1987

Ashok Tharavadi , 'Sharma's Truth' Aside , Madras - 1987

Ritu Khanna, 'Thats why I never got married, City Scan - New Delhi 1987

Santo Datta, ' Sheer Poetry of Formal Elements' The Indian Express - 1986

Partha Pratim Chatterjee ' The Probing Eye' The Economic Times - 1986

Arindam Sen Gupta,  'Moments Comment on the Times, The Patriot -1986

E. Alkazi, Art Heritage Catalogue 1985/86 Art Heritage, New Delhi - 1985

Seminars, Workshops and Lectures:

India Habitat Centre, New Delhi - 2007

India Habitat Centre, New Delhi - 2006

Silkroad Gallery, Tehran – 2005

Oracle,   Goa –2003

After the Revolution, refereed conference on digital media RMIT, Melbourne–2002

Weekend of Ideas, Manning Clark House, Canberra -2002

Shared Heritiage, University of Canberra, Canberra -2001

Canberra School of Art, Photo Media, Canberra - 2001

World Press Photo Exhibition seminar, Colombo - 2000

Australia: Portraying a Nation seminar, New Delhi 1999

Ninth Triennale's International Artists' Workshop, Lecture at New Delhi-1997

Eicher Galllery, New Delhi 1997

KHOJ International Artist's Workshop: Lecture at Modinagar - 1997

Face to Face: A lecture on Indian Studio Photography at the Nederlands Foto

Instituit, Rotterdam - 1997

  Indian Photography : Lecture organised by the British Council at Bharat

Bhavan

Bhopal - 1997

Shoreditch Foto Bienalle: Lecture at Seminar organised by bhe Biennale and

Creative Camera magazine, London - 1996

Colloquium on the National Cultural Policy organised by the Department of

Culture, Government of India, New Delhi-1992

State and Status of Photography in India: A national seminar organised by

the Forum of Contemporary Photographers, North Zone Cultural Center and the

India International

Center, New Delhi - 1992

In Search of the Avant Garde, Seminar on Contemporary Indian Photography at

the India International Center, New Delhi – 1992

  

Teaching workshops:

World Press Photo and Barefoot Gallery workshop, Colombo - 2000

Pathshala - South Asian School of Photography, Dhaka - 2000

School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi - 1995

National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi - 1993/1994

School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi - 1989

Project Support Communication Workshop organised by UNICEF and

CENDIT, New Delhi - 1985

Grants and Commissions:

Australian High Commission and Australia India Council commission to

Photograph and curate an exhibition on Australia - 'Australia: Portraying a Nation "

British Council and Charles Wallace grants to travel through Great Britain and work with "The Shifting Focus"