Nayantara Gurung Kakshpati, a visual arts expert from Kathmandu, Nepal, has said that family photo albums reflect alternate histories.
She was speaking at a one-day seminar on ‘Archive Building and Alternative Histories at the Age of the Photographer 2022’ organized by Kerala Lalitakala Akademi in association with Japan Foundation and Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru in Kochi. on Saturday.
The symposium marked the culmination of the photography exhibition ‘Tohoku – Through the Eyes of Japanese Photographers’ held at the Academy’s Durbar Hall Art Gallery.
Ms. Kakshpati presented pages from old family photo albums of two senior Nepalese journalists, Sasikala Sarma and Pratibha Suvedi, to illustrate her point. Speaking on ‘Idea of Loss and Visual (Miss) Representation’, filmmaker RV Ramani said, “Every picture is a nail in the coffin of our past.”
Sarsija Subramaniam of Reliable Copy, presenting her paper on ‘Images in Translation’, said, “The emphasis on visuals essential to publication has been one that has guided us, as images play an important role not only in the dissemination of information but also in It also plays an important role in the collection and sourcing of information from different histories and geographies.”
Murali Cheeroth, president of Lalitkala Akademi, said the cultural body is committed to organizing cultural and social interactions and events with like-minded bodies in India and abroad, and the photography exhibition was the beginning of such exchange programmes.