Folkwang Photo Talk mit Suryanandini Narain

27.4.2023

Die Reihe der Folkwang Photo Talks wird in diesem Sommersemester durch einen Vortrag von Suryanandini Narain eröffnet. Sie unterrichtet als Assistant Professor in Visual Studies an der School of Arts and Aesthetics der Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Sprechen wird Suryanandini Narain über ein jüngstes Forschungsprojekt: »A Feminine Archive: Making, Viewing and Inhabiting Women’s Photobooks in South Asia«.

Der Vortrag findet statt am 27. April 2023 ab 18 Uhr. Alle Interessierten sind herzlich willkommen! Stattfinden wird der Talk ausschließlich online – Anmeldungen für den Link sind jederzeit durch eine eMail an diese Adresse möglich.

Und hier ist ein kurzes Abstract zum Vortrag: This talk examines women as subjects, makers, and viewers of photobooks in the South Asian context. The feminine subject of photography has been widely discussed in writing, but the female photographer, photobook maker, and viewer find lesser mention. The talk spans different kinds of photobooks that foreground female agency, from published photobooks to singular family albums, the latter of which I regard as formal precursors. I will look at the regular middle-class housewife as an album maker, as well as the professional photographer for the photobooks she produces, and the rich discourse that a range of such works can generate today. Intergenerational differences in narrative, historicization across archives and textualization of meaning across different media will also be discussed. In a larger sense, the talk attempts to retrieve South Asian visual micro-histories through women’s photobooks that reflect on their personal and social identities. Through photobooks, how do women negotiate their own positions and perspectives within larger narratives of family, community, and nation?