a sign of those times in nepal

Signage

PICS: SATISH SHARMA

The creation of the first cities and the invention of writing lie at the heart of our very idea of civilisation. Indian photographer Satish Sharma, who currently lives in Kathmandu, has been intrigued about how they began together and neither now exists without the other. For the first time in modern history, urban dwellers will outnumber rural dwellers, and city dwellers will be living in a "torrent of text".

Sharma takes these texts and makes photographic images of them in the urban context. Ahead of his exhibition that opens in Siddhartha Art Gallery on Friday, Sharma told Nepali Times: "It is these eyeball grabbing visual texts and their relationships with the construction of our lives in our consumer oriented cities that interest me. This is a relationship that I want to explore photographically in Texts and the City."

Texts and the City
Siddhartha Art Gallery
Babar Mahal Revisited
23 September – 17 October
11AM- 6PM Daily
www.siddharthaartgallery.com

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City words

Nepali Times: How did you get inspired to do Texts and the City? 
Satish Sharma: I love reading and read everything. The signs on the streets say so much more about places, cultures and people than books.

What was it about the signage in Kathmandu that grabbed you?
Their raw reflection of the chaotic growth the city is going through.

When does photography transcend satire of the misuse of language to be a visual record of a landscape? 

When it makes one look again. Actually see. And ask questions.

How this exhibition fit into the corpus of your other photography? 
It continues to expand on my interest in the politics of photography: the politics of its use.

http://nepalitimes.com/news.p