NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, a visual arts expert from Kathmandu, Nepal, said family photo albums illustrate alternative histories.
She was talking about ‘Archive Building and Alternative Histories at The Age of the Photographer 2022’ at a one-day seminar organized by Kerala Lalithakala Akademi in association with Japan Foundation and Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru, in Kochi on Saturday.
The seminar marked the culmination of “Tohoku – Through the Eyes of Japanese Photographers”, a photography exhibition held at the Akademi’s Durbar Hall Art Gallery.
Ms. Kakshapati presented pages from old family photo albums of Sasikala Sarma and Prathibha Suvedi, two senior journalists in Nepal, to explain her point. Speaking on “the idea of loss and (mis)visual representation”, filmmaker RV Ramani said: “Every photograph is a nail in the coffin of our past.”
Discussing her article on ‘Images in Translation’, Sarasija Subramanian of Reliable Copy said: “The emphasis on the visual being essential to editing guided us, as images play a key role not only in the circulation of information but also in collecting and researching information from different histories and geographies.
The president of Lalithakala Akademi, Murali Cheeroth, said that the cultural body is committed to organizing cultural and social interactions and programs with like-minded bodies in India and abroad, and that the exhibition of photographs was the beginning of these exchange programs.