British Council hosts three UK authors for Delhi Photo Festival

The biennial Delhi Photo Festival is India’s first and biggest international photography festival, that brings photography, the real democratic art form, into the public space creating an awareness, appreciation and learning of photography as an art form. This year the theme of the festival is ‘aspire’ and is being held at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) from October 30 to November 8, 2015.

The key note address was given by Dr David Campany—a renowned writer, curator, artist and teacher from UK. He was also part of the panel discussion on ‘What is photography in the 21st century?’ alongside Regina Anzenberger, Devika Daulet Singh, Rob Hornstra and Rahaab Allana. 

Artists and curators-Olivia Arthur and Philipp Ebeling will be launching their books Stranger and Land without a Past respectively on November 3 at the British Council. The authors will be in conversation about their book with the curator of PHOTOUKINDIA, Rahaab Allana.

Olivia Arthur’s Stranger says: On 8th April 1961 the MV Dara, a ship carrying passengers between India, Pakistan and the Gulf, sank just off the port of Dubai. An estimated 238 people lost their lives. 

Olivia Arthur’s project Stranger imagines a survivor returning to Dubai fifty years later, and what he would see. The backbone of the project is the story of the shipwreck, transporting the viewer back and forth in history and acting as a reminder of the fragility and skin-deep nature of Dubai. The result is that the layered images fade in and out of view, interspersed with quotes, memories and images of the shipwreck itself.

Phillip Ebeling’s Land Without a Past says: Ebeling’s first book Land without a past is a deeply personal photographic essay on growing up in a small village in the north of Germany and a meditation on the relationship contemporary Germany has with its past. In the book, contemporary portraits of family and friends are interwoven with images of everyday life in the village from the war years, bridging a gap in personal history.