The Exchange

The Exchange Collaboration between University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, UK & National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India

THE TRIPS In 2004 I took up the post of Head of the Photography department at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA). It was an exciting opportunity to lead the department where, in the mid-1980s, I had studied photography.

From 1983 to 1986 I was a student of photography at UCA (then West Surrey College of Art & Design) taught by Martin Parr, Paul Graham, and Karen Knorr, amongst others. The course was becoming increasingly well known for producing some of the hottest talents in a new wave of documentary work thats story is now embedded in the burgeoning history of British photography. I loved the course and was immersed in the challenges of the medium immediately. When my good friend, the animator Jazvinder Singh, suggested we go to India together. I jumped at the chance and off we went on a Pan Am flight bound for Mumbai for a proposed three month back-packing trip. Things didn’t go brilliantly as we both suffered extreme shock during our first few days, I got quite sick and Jaz gave away most of her money to the street kids. Jaz had been to India before, but only as a child, and had been well looked after by family so our hippy style journey was quite different for her. She wore the wrong clothes (in terms of what her compatriots on the street expected); had short, boyish, hair (totally unacceptable for a woman); and smoked American cigarettes in the street: the people were upset by her and she was determined to be herself.

Still, we were overwhelmed by the heat and burdened by the never-ending stream of flies on our arms and in our faces. We drank Thumbs Up cola as there was nothing else. It was July, we were hot, and it was raining. Numerous friends had told us not to travel at this time of year but the long student holiday begged and I had no idea of what monsoon temperature and conditions would be like. In Mumbai I remember thick mud and rats; limbless people on the pavements; and Europeans outside the airport wasted, all their cash spent-up on drugs, begging for money to get tickets home. It was a shock.

At the airport, we were rudely grabbed by a taxi driver, our luggage locked in the boot of his yellow roofed cab and taken to a hotel, somewhere down town. It was 3am, I glimpsed the depressing slum areas around the airport and wondered where I was and what on earth had made me think I could arrive in a cotton dress and sandals. The next day after bathing in a barrel of cold water while listening to the extraordinary cawing of some kind of parrot we went out into the bustle of Mumbai. We had a case of synthetic material to deliver to Jaz’s relative. After driving for hours around the suburbs of Mumbai vainly searching for Jaz’s aunt to give her the suitcase (she had bought the material on her last visit to London) we gave up, paid the driver with the suitcase of materials, and got on a train to Agra to see the mystical Taj Mahal.

In Agra, we were still too hot, we headed further North. In Delhi we boarded a bus to Kashmir ending up, maybe a day later after a terrifying mountain drive, in Srinagar. Dal Lake felt like heaven and we hung about there, in a houseboat, until we became more acclimatised to the way things were. This journey changed my life, opened my eyes to a new world and new ideas. India invited me to think differently, to think upside down, to be aware of the constructed nature of the society I lived in back in Europe. To question things at home as much as I would question things abroad. I also started thinking differently about photography and what one could do with it and why.

In 2006 my Head of School, Sarah Jeans, asked me if I wanted to visit the National Institute of Design (NID) in Gujarat to discuss the development of a photography course. Naturally I was thrilled to go back, the photographs I had taken in India in the mid-1980s still haunted me. I had exhibited them in 1985 in the West End Centre in Aldershot, but they weren’t good enough, they represented such a typical tourist vision of a complex and fascinating place. When I boarded the flight to Mumbai my 1980s trip was still a vivid memory.

When I arrived, I found a totally different India.

At NID I met the then co-ordinator of photography Dr Deepak John Mathews. Deepak was a painter trained in India’s most famous fine art department in Baroda, he converted to photography through his admiration of its magical qualities and its claim to be a democratic medium. He was running short photography courses and electives for the students from other courses and was passionate about the idea of having a proper photography course. We spent a week discussing this and eventually hatched a plan. With the help of colleagues at UCA and bolstered by Deepak’s sheer enthusiasm I applied for funding from the British Council’s innovative UKIERI Awards.

In 2008 we were awarded our first UKIERI grant and the work began in earnest. I was just writing the two-year Masters Photography course document at UCA and together with Deepak we used this document to create a post-graduate photography diploma appropriate for an Indian context. NID is one of the most incredible educational institutions in the world. It is massively competitive to get in and when a student does get in they are connected to the NID network for life. The teaching is varied and lively, the workshops are open and used all night long. There are two campuses: one in the city and a newer one in the desert area of Gandhinagar one hour out of the centre. Both have outstandingly lush gardens and wildlife. Drumming echoes on and off all day from the music room in Gandhinagar campus which has been set up for students to let off steam and relax. At the city campus, Paldi, everyone hangs out around the back gate where the best chai in India is made by Lalu (who has been doing it for over 20 years). And just outside is the famous omelette maker with over 1000 different recipes, many named after the students who had requested them.

In 2008 I applied for further British Council funding (PMI2 Awards) and for the three years that followed the grant funded over 50 UCA students to travel for one month to NID and 30 students from NID to come to UCA. I remember the first batch of UK students arriving at Ahmedabad airport, they were on one of the last direct flights to Ahmedabad (Air India) and I could stand in a viewing area on top of the arrivals hall watching them amble across the runway into the terminal building, it was a thrilling moment. One or two of them were weaving slightly and it turned out they had drunk as much alcohol as possible (on the plane) knowing that they were coming to an alcohol-free state! I was keen for all the students to experience something of what I had experienced, to make this life-changing trip, to expand their horizons and make new friends and get embroiled in new networks. Deepak had started a trial version of the post-graduate photography course and had his first batch of students. The trial course was one year only and three of the students came to UCA to do the second year of the MFA. All three of these students are now teaching photography at new courses in India and the idea of photography becoming a subject area is beginning to take off with new courses in Goa, Bangalore, and Pune all proposed or already started.

Most of the exchange students (both Indian and British) had life-changing experiences and grew as people because of this. They frequently became more confident and more able, and were definitely wiser.

In 2009 the PG Diploma in Photography Design at NID was validated as a two-year degree course with two qualifications (students undergoing the course at NID would be awarded both PG diploma and MFA Photography). The validation event was spectacular with over ten academics and experts in photography arriving in Ahmedabad for a week-long adventure and in some cases for their first exposure to life outside Europe. Peter Kennard and Brett Rogers (The Photographers Gallery, London) were the external panel members for the validation and the event was a huge success. This joint award lasted for the three years that it received British Council funding up to 2012 and then the NID course reverted to be a single award post-graduate degree course in photography (now MDes), and continues to this day with its new co-ordinator Rishi Singhal firmly in position. Rishi is a photographer trained in the US with a broad and challenging vision for the future of photography in India. The course is highly successful with students entering a variety of employment post graduating. NID and UCA had a further UKIERI award for a series of research workshops that also included International Center of Photography in New York. Some exciting discussions were shared through this process and were concluded at an interesting photography conference, Chyya, organised by Dr Deepak J. Mathews at NID. The conference attracted academics and photographers from all over the world and was the first of its kind in India. Since the photography course at NID started, at least five photography festivals have emerged around the country and a new museum has been proposed that would include a photography wing.

Today we have completed the last of the funded trips and the bond between UCA and NID is so strong that we have continued our exchanges (even without funding). The staff and students of both institutions have learnt and experienced so much, India feels like a second home to me and many of us have stayed in contact with staff and students and built life-long friendships and working partnerships. I still haven’t finished my photography project (the one that I started back in 2006) and I now suspect that I might not want to finish it. A relationship with India is like a love affair, it can present you with joy, complications, beauty, and sometimes tragedy, this staggering country is constantly embroiled in my dreams. Today Incredible India is the strap line used by the national tourist trade there is a lot to investigate.

ANNA FOX Professor of Photography / UCA

University for the Creative Arts (UCA) and National Institute of Design (NID) have known of each other since the mid-1980s when our Animation departments worked together informally to develop our Animation courses. In 2006 we started a new creative dialogue around photography and two post graduate programs were proposed to be collaboratively developed at both NID and UCA. In 2008 we began organizing staff and student exchanges with the help of several Prime Ministers India Awards (PMI2) and in 2009 the courses on both sides were validated. The experience of these exchanges was, as you can imagine, life changing: many of the participants have developed lifelong friendships. As well as this, new professional relationships have evolved and students have been able to further their career development in both countries. Several UK students have returned to NID to take up artist in residence posts, to have exhibitions and work professionally, a group of NID students have come to UCA to further their photographic study and two of these students returned to India to take up teaching posts at the first undergraduate photography program in India.

Students and staff worked on a variety of photography projects during the exchange and the following document shows some of these works and some of the subsequent work that students made after returning home.

Significantly, this program of exchange that UCA and NID students have been involved with has allowed them all to have an extraordinarily privileged experience in travelling amongst friends with shared interests in each other’s countries. This document shows some of the work that has grown out of our collaboration, we are very grateful to the British Council, UCA, and NID for their support.

RISHI SINGHAL Head of Photography Design / NID

Photography in India is just a few years younger than the invention of photography. With the emergence of this new medium in the 1840s we can see a lot of people documenting India. India had photography stores in the 1850s and many photographers both from India and abroad. But, the mainstream art and design education never paid serious attention to the education of photography in India.

Both Indian and foreign photographers in India in those days focused on documentation and the kings of that time were the patrons of it. Raja Mansingh of Jaipur himself was an avid photo enthusiast. People like Raja Deen Dayal under the patronage of Nizams and Samuel Bourne who had their own independent photography practices are some of the examples of that glorious past.

Post-independence, photo journalism was the most sought-after genre in photography. People like Raghu Rai, Sunil Jana, and Kishore Pariekh were mainly documenting for the press. Though the history of Indian photography was very eventful a proper study of Indian photography is yet to be done.

After joining National Institute of Design (NID) in 2000 I was fully involved in the photography activities in NID. The department used to offer short courses in photography to the design students and conduct workshops for outsiders. The main task of the department was to support the institute in documentation and support other departments for their photography needs. As a practicing artist and photographer, I was looking at the possibility of developing a full-fledged photography course. After becoming the head of the photography department, I invested my energies in to developing a program that is unique and relevant to the present-day art and design practices. Some of the broad ideas regarding the course was to make it relevant to the present-day art practices. My interest in teaching learning methods also was a reason to develop a new teaching methodology in photography learning.

One afternoon I was sitting in my newly made office in the photography department. It was a normal day and I was doing some routine work, the office was inside the photography department and the work for my new photography program was in progress. One of my colleagues, Nina Sabnani, knocked at the door. She was with Sarah Jeans who was visiting NID. Sarah was from UCA and Nina was showing the campus to Sarah. While chatting I talked to her about the new photography course I was planning to launch in the new semester. She said she will put me in touch with a person who is equally passionate about photography and she was also heading the photography department at UCA. That is how I got introduced to Anna Fox, we had discussions on the new programs that we were starting, and she was very keen to start collaboration between UCA and NID. I was expecting the launch of our Post graduate program at NID by September 2008. We had decided to propose a dual degree program and as an experiment the first two batches were one-year programs and later it was offered as a double degree. MFA from UCA and PGDPD from NID with the support of a UKIERI grant. With the funding from UKIERI we have initiated one of the biggest student exchange programs between UCA and NID. In the first year itself 22 students from UCA came to NID and 15 students from NID went to UCA. The students from NID also had an option to do a second-year MFA at UCA too.

These exchange programs helped the students to develop their photography practice in a new dimension. Also, the friendships between the students from both institutions developed. This helped them to develop joint programs and collaborative works too. Most of the students were first time travellers to another country: it was an eye opener for them. They travelled, enjoyed different food and, moreover, they worked on photography projects together. Our project started in an exciting time in the Indian contemporary art scene.

In the last decade many artists were experimenting with “mediatic realism” - a visual language that was dealing with photographic realism and socio-political subjects in painting. Many artists started using photography as a medium too. There are many art schools in India but hardly any photography schools that offers a full-fledged course on contemporary photography and UCA had a long history of photography programs. Some of the well-known photographers in the UK, like Martin Parr, are from UCA. So, the students were exposed to some of the best practices on photography education. The importance of photography as a medium was picking up in India.

For the first time two commercial galleries were opened that are dedicated to photography and most of the galleries showed their willingness to show photographs in their galleries. Many private patrons started collecting contemporary photography works too.

Photography departments started showing international photographers at NID’s design gallery regularly. This created an awareness about this medium in the city and exposure to the students at NID. We have invited the photographers who were exhibiting to conduct workshops. This project helped us to bring in a change in photography education in India. Though photography had reached India soon after its invention, the education of photography was never part of the mainstream. Most of the photographers were self-taught or studied abroad. The places that offers photography courses were mainly focusing on skill development. At NID we wanted to give importance to contemporary photography practice and the course was aimed at developing independent thinking and visual language.

Many faculties from UCA visited NID as part of the UKIERI project and they exposed the Indian students in the contemporary photography practices of the UK. After the successful completion of two years the course became MFA and PGDPD (now MDes) in photography design.

The objective of this course is to provide a broad education. It gives equal importance to skill as well as intellectual aspects of photography. It allows the student to choose the genre of photography that they wanted to specialize in, and because of the global exposure through the exchange programs they could take an informed decision on the career path they wanted to pursue.

The success of the UKIERI project can be seen by the continued performance of the students who have been a part of this project. The works presented here are the best example of it. This body of work by the students of UCA and NID has become a trendsetter and the emergence of a new school of thought.

DEEPAK JOHN MATHEW Head of Photography Design (2002-2013) / NID

PARTICIPANTS’ WORK

Nik Adam & Luke Norman / UK PEACOCK Peacock is a bird of prey and a work in progress.

Alekh Ajayaghosh / India NUTURESCAPE When one marvels at the scene of the sky and the earth meeting in perfect harmony without knowing that this harmony has been manmade. Man designs the landscape for its pleasant and aesthetic purposes. There might be no place on the earth that has remained undisturbed by human activity.

Akash Anand Bhagwani / India UNDER THE MANGO TREE The document compares the most economic barbers in UK and India, and showcases the drastic difference in their social status. The weaker section usually faces more bias, hence the document compares the most economic one. During early 14th-15th century, barbers in UK held a high status in the society as they were not only hairdressers, but also professionals in curing people as they used to perform dentistry operations.

While in India the barbers were considered to be a lower caste and due to the rigid caste system they were not given respect. With the globalization, barbers of both the countries are achieving the same status.

Ankita Asthana / India CROSSING OVER While crossing over bridges, time seems to come to a standstill. The river flowing beneath you seems to be part of a parallel universe. Hundreds of people cross over these bridges. Some just walk past without stopping, some spend a while on these bridges to take in the breathtaking views; William Wordsworth composed a beautiful sonnet describing the beauty of the view on Westminster Bridge. If one looks at the final images with care, little people can be seen either on the bridge or under it. That adds an element of mystery to the life on these bridges.

Chetana. B. M / India TRAIN ACROSS FARNHAM The environment and ambience from one place to another is invariably different. It has an impact on almost anyone who travels to a new place, this impact remained with me during my stay in Farnham. Travelling abroad for the first time, a new acquaintance I chose to portray.

Capturing the forms of the pavements of the main street, the colours of the landscape around the town, are the main aspects of this piece of work. Its aim was to record a portion of the trail I followed in Farnham along with the lush green, serene landscapes that are exceptional.

Brendan Baker & Daniel Evans / UK SLEEPING THROUGH AN EARTHQUAKE We spent much of our time in India wandering. Everywhere. But at the same time to nowhere in particular. We were driven by simple curiosity, like a couple of foreign flâneurs. We would photograph everything that we felt compelled to photograph and it is perhaps not a version of India you will immediately recognise. In the end, the project became about us being in India, as opposed to about India itself. These are the images India made us take.

Nalini Balakumar / India A RENDEZVOUS WITH FARNHAM Travelling to another time-zone for the first time were indeed triggers for my excitement as well as a tiny bit of anxiety. I was introduced to an unaccustomed landscape, in terms of colours, climate, and light. These photographs were shot as I was getting to know Farnham.

My work is an exploration of medium format camera and color darkroom process.

Mridul Batra / India RURAL LIFE AND STUDIO SETS In the series “Rural Life and Studio Sets” I look at revisiting photographic traditions of erstwhile studio photography culture. Popularity of portraiture in early years after the advent of photography was inextricably linked to the need of the bourgeoisie to represent itself.

Every culture then developed its own style of studio portraiture with one common thread of people’s aspirations running common through each of these sets.

Jaimin Bhavsar / India UNTITLED This project is about Indian citizens living in the United Kingdom; all of whom are Indian by birth. Some people come to study, some come to work, but the basic goal for them is to earn money. This piece of work focuses on one community from India that emigrated from the western region, a place known as “Gujarat”. The community is known as the “Gujarati” community. I focus on their life and their individual views about the country they now live in which helps the viewer understand the scenario in the U.K. and the problems immigrants face here.

Shine Bhola / India ABSENCE The practice of killing or euthanasia, the killing of a pet , showed me a complete new picture of the ‘Absence of Life’. In a way it was my decision to put an end to a creature’s life but this action created conflict in my mind making me think long and hard about the absence of ‘something’. Death is unseen by me and probably by everybody. Various subjects of study define it in their own ways. For me, until now it has been just an expression of ‘absence’. This is a concept that cannot be put under a definition, as the absence of something is intangible.

Thom Bridge / UK NOISE There are two types of noise that are constant in India, firstly the sonic bombardment that aggravates the day-to-day and secondly the underlying hum of India’s industrial transformation. Coming from a quiet village I was immediately fascinated by two things during my extended stay in India, the cacophony of noise that confronts you, and my position as a foreigner with a camera. “Noise” is a series of photographs that document my experience in this unfamiliar environment and range from illusive meditative moments to the everyday aural assault of the traffic jam between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar.

Andrew Bruce / UK ARVA In January 2010 I travelled to India with a 10x8� view camera. I worked slowly and meticulously searching out still scenes in a landscape that can be so chaotic. The result is a body of work that exudes a classic picturesque tranquillity and a spirit that fits the tradition of the Western explorer, but also captures a slow sensitive gaze and an admiration for this beautiful country.

Amit Chahalia / India UNTITLED The experience when one travels to a different place can be quite profound.

Being an Indian where life can get quite adventurous: the number of people on the streets, the noise, the dirt, construction work, someone playing loud devotional music at four in the morning, the overcrowded vehicles or the lack of privacy at times. Farnham offered a very different perspective on how life can be. The lack of chaos, orderliness and the silent drizzle are all overwhelming. People are very polite and discreet. For me the experience was unusual and at the same time intriguing. The series is my reaction to a new place in the form of landscapes.

Anisha Crasto / India TWILIGHT Twilight – the magic hour. The romantic quality of ambient light after sunset brings out a whole new dimension and character to a place. It is that time of the day when everyone is settling down for the night and the only sound one hears is the whir of moths and the snap of a stick. It is then drama begins, with clouds dancing in the skies and street lamps lightening up street corners. This body of work is my exploration of this quality of light, which embodies technical challenges, haunting moods and narratives that are intriguing and fascinating.

Stephen Cuss / UK 60 DAYS AND NIGHTS 60 Days and Nights is a series of made up everyday images; I photographed anything that caught my eye of any subject or relevance. I set myself a target each day to photograph something interesting, one in the day and one at night. The most enjoyable part of this project was the sheer freedom of subject matter, and the fact that it really wasn’t important that the pictures were very different and maybe unrelated.

In many ways it aided the success for me in the sense one could truly experience the adventure of India through the variety.

Liju Das / India BUSKERS The short definition for ‘Buskers’ is “A person who entertains in a public place for donations”. The goal of the Busker Project is to allow the viewer to see these wonderful street performers and their performing techniques. Busking is an art that requires a great deal of patience and physical stamina. Today the street performers simply want to reveal their art to a wider audience, in vibrant surroundings. The series of photographs showed the wonderful funny portraits of the street artists as well as portraying the struggle of their life.

Siddharth Stephen Dharamjit / India VIDEOGAMES With the advent of technology the children of the future have changed their preferences, their full body workouts have now been replaced by free access into the virtual reality created by videogames. Â The access into this virtual reality by adolescents moulds them into subversive introverts who choose to exist in a make-believe world and detach themselves from the beautiful world and its people. This series of work looks at documenting the victims of the advent of technology, the swings and parks that once were the hub of activity for children that have now simply become silent spectators.

Grigoris Digkas / UK EXILED IN INDIA

It is an autobiographical diary of my residency to India. I took the role of the white European coming in India with a naive knowledge of the country, based on the stereotypical cliches. I developed a personal perspective of India by both being critical of European societies, but also thoughtful and open to the unknown Indian culture, keeping in mind the complexities of the postcolonial theories and the influence of global capitalism. During my residency one image was posted every day in a blog, creating a interactivity with followers. The use of image and text in a diary form aims the contextualisation of the poetic images, in order to create a dialogue between the personal and the universal, as well as fiction and documentary.

Ishaan Dixit / India STOLEN DREAMS It’s in the nature of traveller to walk along with stories his journey gets him into. A young Indian visiting London or other way around, knows the shared past and doesn’t hold anyone responsible from the new generation. Yet, there are at times when you walk around cities and places that have been colonial in nature, you remember the stories that you heard in small towns and villages of colonized places. The photographer through photomontage, tried to share the perspective of a traveller who walked along with the old stories of India to a new city and tried to imagine what if.

Suruchi Dumpawar / India WATCHING THE ENGLISH It is my interpretation of “Englishness”, the idiosyncrasies of which at times amused and baffled me. These shop displays subject to close scrutiny, reveal fetishes and fads, which are then reinforced by the title.

The multiple layers and juxtapositions inherent in images have been a preferred medium to reveal interesting insights and observations.

Reflections also allow me to include myself in the pictures, infiltrating the predominantly English view with an alien element and also reiterating the fact that these pictures are my subjective reflection on “Englishness”.

Nikita Dutt / India LONDON TAXI DRIVERS ‘London taxi drivers’ is a series of portraits. Research done by National Geographic says, the brain of the London taxi driver is the sharpest across the world. These taxi drivers are like no other taxi drivers in the world. The job requires years of preparation to pass a test known as The Knowledge.

In India, there are no specifications of becoming a taxi driver, other than the usual driving license. Whereas in London, drivers are supposed to be intellectual, to be well prepared for the profession for which they rigorously train for, for years.

Niccolò Fano / UK DIU The long gulf and sandy shore of Nagoa Beach is the center of leisure in the small island of Diu, located off the coast of Gujarat in the union district of Daman, India. Here the Gujarati middle class escapes the frenetic city life to enjoy the sun, the hotels and their families. Tourists from outside the state and international visitors are a rarity; furthermore Diu is as a tolerant area in terms of the alcohol prohibition heavily enforced in Gujarat. This feature is in full swing on the beach where the men drink happily under the sun and play in the waves with their children whilst the women observe and take the occasional clothed dip.

Andrew Ferguson & Oliver Poddar / UK ONLY APRICOTS ‘Only Apricots’, is a form of representation towards man, one and his environment. It is a response to the way in which people react inside and outside their known and unknown surroundings. This is symbolic of the culturally coated shell people construct when faced with different conditions. Not only does this try to encourage the idea of hiding within a backdrop, but also a form of engaging with the unknown. Working in a pair allowed each of us to experiment with our surroundings, giving us more confidence to act up and have fun in our new environment.

Joel Fernando R / India NIGEL’S Nigel’s is an 80 year old barber shop in Farnham. I was intrigued by the several barber shops present in the small town. Nigel’s has been under the ownership of two people from day they opened the shop. I was making pictures of all that I found interesting in the shop. I tried to look closer at the space which was different from what I was used to in India, while also exploring the colour film photography, medium-format camera, and colour darkroom printing.

Anna Fox / UK PULIKALI TIGERS In ‘Pulikali Tigers’ both photographer and subject perform with and for the camera. The photographer, with her large format-camera and temporary outdoor studio appears like an amateur anthropologist and the tiger-performers act out a pose from their dance for the camera. Fox is interested in the point at which the transformation between personality and performer is almost complete; the moment when they are just about to be removed from the everyday and placed instead into a performative carnival space, where anything can happen. The Pulikali dance is fairly unique in India as it is an event that is not tied to religion or to caste.

Ying Gao / UK UNTITLED As a photography student originally from China I am curious about the nature of ordinary people’s lives. They make up the majority of the society and probably contribute the most to society. Therefore their lives are an important window through which we gain insight into society. By backpacking around northern India, I photographed many working-class people with the hope of documenting their lives and living environment through the lens of someone whose country, like India, is undergoing rapid development and change.

Shilpa Gavane / India UNTITLED This project is a satirical take on the idea of the self-portraits in popular tourist photography. As a tourist one is expected to bring back photographs of themselves in various foreign locations, somewhat forcefully smiling and looking happy. There is a lack of insight in such standardized photographs.

I have deconstructed what goes on in the mind of tourists and categorized the different types of poses people recreate. Through the photographs and their respective captions I have tried to bring out the hidden, and sometimes double meanings, of what tourist photography is all about by using wit and humor as a tool in the work.

Yuri Gomi / UK INTERACTIVE When we cross geographical borders, our own culture becomes visible on the surface of our skin. There are many interesting accidents were happened when people visit the foreign countries. For me, the scenery in India is like a theater because there are full of vivid and beautiful colors that I do not usually look at. To express the moment when I felt cultual differences, I took photographs with the camera in my mobile, laid it out like a stage of theater, printed them in local photo copy shop in BW and painted them with marker pens. This project portrays peaceful interaction between different cultures.

Joanna Greco / UK OCCASION Occasion is a series of photographs and text that records a moment between photographer and subject. During our lifetime whether it is throughout our education, work or in our travels we make friends with whom we share experiences, sometimes we never meet them again.

This ongoing piece of work is a record of the friendship that has begun, but also marks the opportunity of meeting again.

Anita H. Grosz / UK UNTITLED Dislocation was the theme I pursued while in Ahmedabad. There were two communities I was interested in understanding, the river slum which had just been “removed� while I was there and the Jewish community whose community had been shifted with the growing Muslim community and was feeling pressure to move to Israel. Within these communities, personal shrines personify some of the motifs of their lives, beliefs and losses. Both communities showed incredible pride and resilience, doing what they could to keep the family and community intact. These images I hope represent the peoples integrity despite circumstance.

Prachi Gupta / India UNTITLED Farnham is very well endowed by nature, being in the countryside and there is an active interaction between the locals and the natural wealth, through planned and unplanned interventions, which is what forms the base of this project. There are lots of walking trails, forest land and parks, not to forget, the massive, beautifully structured Farnham Park in and around Farnham. Sites like these provide the platform to go back into nature’s lap and experience its splendour. The project seeks to explore this relationship between human and nature in Farnham.

Roshini Vadhera’s wedding, Delhi 2007

Nigah’s queer picnic, Delhi 2007

Sunil Gupta / UK and India DIARIES I always have a camera with me and have been recording a variety of scenes that interest me over the years. Every now and then I stop and edit these in some meaningful way. One set became a book1, some circulate just as single prints in people’s homes. For me it’s also a way into the more critical work I am engaged in researching and producing from day to day.

1 Gupta, S. (2008). Wish You Were Here (1st ed.). New Delhi: Yoda Press.

Retrieved from http://yodapress.co.in

Gary Hampton / UK SELF-PORTRAITS BY NEW DELHI SLUM KIDS This series is unusual amongst portraiture of Indian subjects by Western photographers. The method and style of portraiture here is not to impose an orientalising or sardonic perspective on young Indians but to give them time, space and technology to portray themselves. These are not stereotyped images of slum kids - guilt tripping fodder for world media - wallowing in their deprivations and begging for your pity. Rather they are part of the billions who constitute the youth power house of India, showing their confidences along with their hesitancies, their aspirations as well as their fears.

Emily Harris / UK UNTITLED Emily is interested in the use of a pith helmet, symbolic of the British Empire and colonial history in the ‘East’. Wanting to amplify notions of power with a tragic fold, the series references contemporary tourism and the exotic territories that are still of interest despite India’s fast growing economy and Imperialism as history.

Fiona Harvey / UK UNTITLED I have a personal link with India: my family lived and worked there for over 20 years and two siblings were born there. Whilst in Ahmedabad, I wanted to link my family’s past with today’s India, by using photography to connect what I saw there in 2010 with what Indian photographers were seeing in the 1930s and 1940s. I found little work by Indian photographers of the period showing ordinary people or ordinary lives.

My response was to make a body of work that encompassed the lives of ordinary people: at work, going to work, reflecting the modern India.

Peter Haynes / UK UNTITLED Whilst in India, I struggled to make a series of photos I was really happy with. I battled with the idea in my head capturing “Classic India” images I could easily view on Google. I resorted to my iPhone to document what I was doing and seeing. I do this at home in a similar way and share the photos online with people who look at my website. I have 100’s of real photographs in negative form sitting at the bottom of a drawer in my bedroom waiting to be scanned. India was hard to photograph.

Laura Hensser / UK BEYOND ‘Beyond’ is directed toward an attempt to question our international

preconceptions of foreign lands. Through the consideration of colonialism, I have placed myself next to explore this idea of the traveller’s behavior, the need to replicate, to become part of something different when abroad.

Whether this is an unconscious act to become accepted, we tend to change our physical appearance to adapt to indigenous traditions. In my effort to become less western and to imitate the dress wear of individual women, I have in turn become more obvious as an outsider. This brief engagement with being and place challenges the conventions of a traveler’s behavior, to explore, conquer and leave.

John Hersey / UK BOUNDARY OR LIFE BY THE WALL This is an ongoing series of work, which documents the landscapes and people that live on a building site, alongside the Sabarmati River in Ahmedabad. Whilst focusing on the temporary aesthetic of the placid landscape, the work is also about acceptance as a foreign traveller into an area of barren wilderness sandwiched between the commercial, concrete jungle of Ahmedabad’s ‘New City’’ and the relentless, claustrophobic bustle of the ‘Old City’. The title responds to Thoreau’s “Walden; Or life in the woods”, a series of essays that explores our existence when challenged with solitary time spent in wilderness.

Timothy Hill / UK BORDER This series of work documents the border between India and Pakistan using re-appropriated satellite images. Each image shows a body of water that transcends the man made border. The project hopes to explore the notions of borders and boundaries with the white line that represents the border harshly dissecting the landscape. Man cannot cross the border he put in place for himself, however nature ignores this and flows from one side to the other. The rivers coming from one side trespass on the other. The border represents a tension between the two lands, but the rivers represent a coming together, an attachment, a free flowing element of life.

Hannah Hughes / UK UNTITLED The projects I intended to explore during my stay in Ahmedabad changed beyond all recognition after around three hours of landing there. I quickly realised that the atmosphere and the people were a far more interesting subject matter, and that I should endeavour to capture the vibrant culture that revealed itself daily to me as I walked down the street. The hospitality and kindness shown to us by our Indian hosts at NID seemed to be a trait shared by the whole city, lending humour and warmth to many of the photographs I took.

Kim Jakobsen To / UK UNTITLED Playing with the fleeting moment, a haze is placed over the subject. It’s not trying to show a ‘photo-realistic’ image often seen in magazines, that grab you with their immediacy and ‘realness’ to convey a typical portrayal of poor India and its living conditions. Instead, these images do not grab hold of you in the same sense, but let you look more carefully, maybe more curious. The white light also doubles as the dusty haze you often get in Gujarat, and lets us place the images in a more dreamlike consciousness, rather than a raw stark reality often associated with India.

Su JI / UK MY INDIA LIFE This is my first time to go to India, it is very iconic. The architecture, life and culture is very different. But, then I put the thing to cover by narrowing your focus on the daily affairs. Who can prove that I am in India? Is this India? Is it in India?

Shampa Kabi / India GRETEL “Not until we are lost, do we begin to truly understand ourselves” - Henry David Thoreau This project is an attempt at exploring a new place through literally losing myself in it. Inspired by the story of ‘Hansel and Gretel’, I strip myself of the ordinary surroundings, known faces and daily routines to pick up on little hints to find my way back home. With all of the otherwise “normal” things gone, it is but a direct experience with the self.

Maria Kapajeva / UK ONE MONTH The idea comprises a series of paired portraits of Western tourists in a very different cultural environment. I went with a group of students to India and photographed each of them on the first and last day of their visit, one month apart. The portraits are presented in pairs to emphasize their difference to the viewer. Making the viewer stop and examine the photographs is what I aim for with all my projects. Having an insatiable curiosity about cultural issues, this project was my first attempt to explore the influence of another culture / climate / style of life on people, exploiting the opportunity I’d been given of visiting a country with a very different culture.

Abhishek Khedekar / India FARNHAM PEOPLE First time I have travelled to some place far away from India. I was staying in Farnham and it was a beautiful place. Loitering around the streets and parks I started conversing with the people in Farnham. I realised they were as much in love as much as I was with the place. The stories and history they shared made me look at the city in all the shades I could. The people were simple as they seem, kind as they could be. I am not sure if I will meet them again or not but I take their stories as my memories and their portraits as a picture of Farnham.

Emma Kirkwood / UK INDIA 2012 For this trip, I discovered an overwhelming amount of cultural change, I took particular interest in the traffic, as it varies greatly. The busy commute to work is completely different to the way we see it over in the UK. I wanted to capture the chaos and freeze it. Understanding that these busy surroundings are just the norm in this town and country. This project was about understanding and observing what happens in a different surrounding, and documenting it.

Shiho Kito / UK PIKARI ‘pikari’ is an onomatopoeia in Japanese, which means ‘shining’, ‘glittering’, or ‘flashing’. The idea for pikari came from the words, ‘star-navigation’. It is the ancient technique of Polynesian sailors. They used to use it to find their location and direction, guided only by the natural environment, for example, stars. Since leaving my home country, I have used lights in cities to find a place, like the Polynesian sailors did with stars, with a large-format camera in 20 - 60 minute exposures.

Karen Knorr / UK INDIA SONG

In her work Karen focuses its gaze on the upper caste culture of the Rajput in India and its relationship to the “other”. The series considers men’s space (mardana) and women’s space (zanana) in Mughal and Rajput palace architecture, havelis and mausoleums through large-format digital photography. She celebrates the rich visual culture, the foundation myths and stories of northern India, focusing on Rajasthan and using sacred and secular sites to consider caste, femininity and its relationship to the animal world. Animals photographed in sanctuaries, zoos and cities inhabit palaces, mausoleums , temples and holy sites, interrogating Indian cultural heritage and rigid hierarchies. They mutate from princely pets to avatars of past feminine historic characters, blurring boundaries between reality and illusion and reinventing the Panchatantra for the 21st century.

Ioannis Koussertari / UK UNTITLED Through the use of reportage and portrait photography this series is a part of an ongoing project that explores cultural identity within Ahmedabad’s natural and urban environments. As a British photographer the objective was to capture intimate and personal moments, which incorporated the customs, practices and the characteristics of various chosen, posed subjects and subject matter in different locations. In essence, I wanted this to show longevity as a part of the ever-developing cultural diversity in Ahmedabad.

Pradeep Kumar / India THE PHOTOGRAPHERS ‘The Photographers’ is a series of work that brings out the spirit and the vision behind the exchange programme between the UCA and NID. To depict this through the medium of photography, I decided to do a series of portraits of students from both universities in pairs with UCA as the background. This brings out the essential character of the two worlds, their views and their bonding.

Chris Linaker / UK ‘IF CRICKET IS A RELIGION, SACHIN IS GOD’ (VAIBHAV PRUPANDRE) Despite its foreign origins, cricket has found strong roots within Indian culture and magically transformed not just the way the game is played but how it is received as well. Instinctive and imaginative improvisations that the British would be amazed at are an important part of the Indian experience. Cricket is played almost anywhere and everywhere, walls and stones for wickets, a rubber ball, piece of wood for the bat. Indians’ innovations can make the most out of a British introduced game. Cricket is more than a religion, its a lifestyle and culture loved by the people of the nation. Cricket is a game that unites every Indian, devoid of caste, creed, religion, sex and language.

Clare Long / UK BELIEVE - PART 2 I have always had a keen interest in experiencing new cultures and exploring new places. This interest spurred me to continue a project I completed in the UK called “Believe”, and to take it further – to India, to explore the different religions that are present there. My original project was about the rarity of finding a young person in Britain who had a belief in God; I wanted to contrast this work with the vibrant religions that are very much alive in India. I kept a similarity in the work by not directly depicting the religion in the photograph.

Pedro Maçãs / UK CLOSER STRANGER My photographic work is primarily an involvement with people and things in some way close to me. In the end, I’m trying to grasp the nature of the world today and for an understanding of things as a whole. A whole based on a selection of motifs and significant themes taken from the world. Closer Stranger is a photographic project that researches India both as a territory and as a concept; and, it has nothing to do with making a stereotype image rather to analyse the dominant things of the visible world.

Agnieszka Maksimik / UK ENCOUNTER ‘Encounter’ is a series of photographs taken in various locations in India. The project embraces people that I met ‘passing by’ during my travels around Ahmedabad. I try to make my subjects to be relaxed and responsive, sharing with me in the making of the picture. The uncanny and the unknown is what drives me to my subjects. The essence of the portrait is an ‘instant’ connection and attraction that happens in the moment of encounter on the street. The subject is willing to reveal something personal to me, the photographer and to explore his/her identity in front of the lens. My way of working is very spontaneous and intuitive.

Neha Malhotra / India THE CHATEAU The Castles or Chateau (French) are structures that talk about the town and its rulers whilst also possessing a rich heritage and history behind them. The photographs in this series epitomize the panache of the rulers of the castle, the grandeur and style they lived in and how they still preserve their legacy. These photographs also incorporate the important characteristics of the rulers such as the different architectural styles and the chapels, which represent different eras from different reigns. The photographs are my perception of the castle.

Poornima Marh / India SPACES IN BETWEEN

Space contains compressed time. There are memories securely fixed in space.

It is not about the representation of space, or enumerating their picturesque features, or understanding why they are comfortable. It is more about the emotional connection to these dwellings of the past. Gaston Bachlard in his book ‘Poetics of Space’ says “All the spaces of our past moments of solitude, alien to the promises of the future.” He adds that even when we no longer use that stairway, that room is lost and gone, no longer take that road. There still remains the fact that we once loved that room, once walked through that path. We still return to these “spaces of solitude” in our dreams through our memories.

Orande Mensink - Nouws / UK LOVE ON THE RIVERSIDE WEST (work in progress) In Ahmedabad, India, the Riverfront West has recently been renewed.

Cars and auto-rides are not allowed, so it’s a remarkable quiet space in the middle of a buzzing city. This concrete boulevard gives shelter to young Indian couples looking for a bit of shade and privacy. It’s also hiding because their loves are not supposed to happen. Couples face troubles as being from different castes, or an arranged marriage not with the person now next to them. One couple told me their love was nearly impossible as he’s a Muslim and she’s a Hindu. I love the word nearly.

Alexander Milnes / UK I DON’T KNOW WHERE I’M GOING - WALKING IN INDIA Whilst in India for the second time I felt slightly lost, even though I was in an area I had been to before and I thought I knew. This project is about me exploring my surroundings and responding to the different places I found whilst walking in Ahmedabad & Gandhinagar.

Sheik Mohamed Ishaq / India THE NIGHT It was in the beginning of my teenage that I noticed that I was at peace when it was late night. In fact, it gave me a sense of solace and solitude that I deeply longed for during the day time. Night is the time when familiar things loose its identity and becomes unfamiliar. The busiest streets, noisy corridors, polluting vehicles and all the other disturbances seem to vanish at night.

It was this which made me look at how the surfaces familiar to me became unfamiliar at night. The series of images are the photographs of the places which were familiar to me by day and became unfamiliar by night.

David Moore / UK ‘HOW AM I DOING?’ - PERFORMANCE PHOTOGRAPHS

My practice addresses a reverse, or post Panoptic view, something that sits outside of a practice aligned to The State, and often a of subjugation of whom it represents. The work I have made in this regard, examines social and political apparatus. In ‘How am I doing?’ I continue an enquiry via a models ‘agency’ within the languages of commercial photographic practice as an apparatus that constructs templates of meaning and offers traces of global culture. Rajat Jain, my Gurjurati collaborator, and ex-model, agreed to help for a fee. The photographs were made in one session and crucially, I offered Rajat no direction at all, leaving him to perform how he thought best to the western photographer.

Priyanka Oberoi / India UNTITLED To become one: that is the first and last goal of love. The stage of secrecy is essential to the formation of a couple. In such situations, lovers forget the exterior - family, friends. They need solitude. Once lovers are sure that their feelings are reciprocated, they feel free to come out in broad daylight. That’s the time when they can walk hand in hand and kiss on café terraces. I did a study on these themes and ideas by roaming around on the streets of England celebrating this stage of love: A photographer with cupid’s arrow to remind them of how good they look together.

Natalie Paetzold THE EYE The image is part of a work in progress, which I started during my exchange at the National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar. Researching already into the notion of seeing, perception and simulacra I noticed illuminated trees on the campus after walking back from the bus station.

Through the nearby streetlamps the tree tops appeared abstract and almost mystical. Somehow the illuminated branches in different colours reminded me of the blood vessels of one’s retina. After taking photographs, I experimented by placing the same circular image repeatedly over itself in order to create a sense of a visually distorted reality.

Haris Pathirikodan / India T-SHIRT CULTURE The dressing of a person can reflect his or her personality, feelings and passions. There are various messages conveyed like the indications of the person’s gender, income, occupation, social class, political, ethnic and religious affiliation, attitude, attitude towards comfort, fashion, traditions, gender expression etc.T-shirts also serves as a canvas for art and self-expression. T-Shirts with slogans and graffiti points towards what the person is and who wears it. Such t-shirts are more about the identity of a person. T-shirts have proven to be powerful vehicles of speech. This series of photographs explores the T-shirt culture in UK.

Prabuddah Paul / India BRICK LANE Brick Lane is one of the very few places in London that has several restaurants providing exclusively sub-continental spicy food. This place provides employment for hundreds of people. Most of the people who work in these restaurants are students who have migrated from countries like India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. These students are the most vulnerable section of the population who face difficulties in terms of work, living, studies, food etc. They are the ones who undergo inhumane and critical situations for their survival. Thus, this project portrays the lives of these young people in Brick Lane.

Maya Pillai / India FROM THE SIDELINES As someone who has been surrounded by football fanatics throughout my life, going to England for the first time meant instructions from everyone to go watch a football match. I was quite excited by this prospect, but once in the country, realized that getting tickets as a tourist would’ve meant a lot of begging and pleading or some major emptying of the pocket. Since neither were possible I decided to document the closest thing to the real deal, the fans. Waiting fans, cheering fans, fighting fans. They were my 90 minutes of energy and entertainment.

Maniyarasan R / India CYCLES I was intrigued by the wide variety of bicycles, the way they are designed, coloured, or modified by humans according to the needs and functions.

These bicycles are also a suggestion about whom it belongs to, what are his/her preferences, what they do where they go, even how and where they lock it. In a way, a portrait of a bicycle can probably reveal the identity of the owner. Inspired from the movie ‘Cars’, in this series I have attempted to look at the human and his bicycle in the same way.

Ravikiran Rangaswamy / India VOICE OF INDIA IN UK ‘Voice of India in UK’ is about Indianism in UK. The project brings out the flavour of India, a part of the Indian festive spirit, and the manifestation of contrast existing because of the Indian settlement in a foreign land.

Southall, in west London, is also known as “mini Punjab Southall”. The area houses saree shops, Himalaya Cinema and Chinni Chor restaurant.

Rathyatra at Trafalgar Square was organised by the Iskon community.

People from other countries took part in the event too, chanting ‘Hare Rama Hare Krishna’.

Chinar Shah / India DIARY OF SIGNS The project ‘Diary of Signs’, util now, has been a working investigation into ‘state-approved-state-non-approved’ images on the street. Be it Graffiti, photography or billboards: the complex narrative of the project comments on the causes of all those that are de-centered, dispossessed and silenced. The project documents signs of resistance in art and through art. The narrative of text within the images and medium of a toy and Polaroid camera adds to the resistance by commenting on power hierarchies.

Aditi Sharma / India SIFAR

“We are all visitors to this time, this place, we are just passing through. our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love and then return home.�

A new land, new people, new stories. But still the sense of wandering and an urge to discover more. You travel to new places and try to reclaim memories.

Often you sit back and gaze over skyline and remember what someone told you. This body of work was an attempt to capture my response towards an unfamiliar land. I reflected what I saw and felt during my stay in a foreign land.

Amit Sheokand / India CITYSCAPES The urban equivalent of landscapes, the cityscapes of Farnham fascinated me and were a welcome change from the otherwise crowded life of big cities. At the same time, a sense of alienation and detachment from the new environment encompassed me. The empty roads, artificial lights and Victorian architecture looked surreal. I chose to print mirror images to put across the same feelings to the viewer.

Arunima Singh / India ENCOUNTER This work is the representation of my journey, personal experiences and encounters with different cultures. Enrolment at NID placed me closer to people from different nationalities, each representing different values and identities. Interaction with the people who visited NID from other countries and my exposure during an exchange programme forced a lot of personal thinking in regards to cultural identity. This has been a reason for personal conflict and much thought. Â My inner journey and the contrast with others are just a reflection of my ideas, the emotional, physical, mental exchange and encounters with culture.

Charan Singh / UK NOT AT HOME “There is no place like home” or “our home is more beautiful then the heaven”, phrases like this always make me think about the old fundamental question of a happy home. It seems necessary to have a happy home or at least one is supposed to have one in the general scheme of things. A place of intimate relations, a sense of security and a place to nurture oneself, a place you don’t have to pretend or put on a persona for others to see. Nevertheless, so many of us are still struggling with the dislocation of “home”, together with its blindness of rituals, religion, conditioning, and its web of claustrophobic relationships, that some of us still think we are not at home.

Anupam Singha/ India WHAT IF Life is a journey and at various junctures we had to decide which path we want to tread there on. Is it the journey or is it the destination? Who else might have travelled the same path as I have? These are some of the questions we all might have asked ourselves at some point of time.

When I look at a road it reminds of the same; where does it lead to? Who all I may meet? Should I go or shouldn’t I? What if I had embarked on a different route? What if...

Maanik Sinha / India SOCIAL SPACES - PUBS The experience of feeling connected to others seems to start very early in our lives. Today, the feeling is still intact but there are a multiple barriers because of which people have become dependent on social spaces that acts like a trigger to indulge in conversation and get to know people around. These spaces are found in abundance, in and around the cities.

Restaurants, pubs, parks and more have now built an aura that reflects a sense of serendipity. Based on this concept, my project outlines the old yet the most authentic spaces such as pubs in the United Kingdom that are still the most desired spaces that gives people are chance to connect.

Chris Spackman / UK UNTITLED I had no particular project plan because I was not sure what to expect.

I decided that I would act like an explorer, wandering the streets of Ahmedabad and Ghandinagar and see what happened and who I met along the way. One thing became clear and that was the friendliness, hospitality and curiousness of the people. I was welcomed by virtually everyone I met and they wanted to be photographed.

Kirsti Taylor Bye / UK UNTITLED As a child I had an immanent and almost frantic need to communicate, something. Spare time was often spent constructing phones out of empty tin cans, baking paper and household string. When they were done, I had nothing to say. These images from India are part of a larger body of work, with images from several locations and collaborations with people, in particular photographer Shiho Kito. The body of work investigates our feelings towards communication in society today, using string as a main visual tool, leading the way to something that I want to tell you, that I still do not know what it is.

Adira Thekkuveettil / India STILL LIFE As a child, I was overtly attached to inanimate objects. I would feel terrible when my parents threw away water bottles or packets. I felt as if they had given their lives to us, which we simply cast away after use. Whenever I came across a lone littered packet, I would wonder if they were happier in their new home, where they finally had a chance to live undisturbed. In England, when I found lonely rubbish in the undergrowth of quiet parks, I looked at the spaces as their homes. Walking around and finding things left behind in the vast parks of Farnham, I somehow felt connected to them, alone in a foreign land, yet somehow fitting in.

Visaka Vardhan / India SHARING SPACES

The project explores the time and space relationship of the ancient and modern architecture, both coexisting and sharing the same space over a period of time in one of the oldest growing global cities - London, UK. The images of the architecture are multi-layered on a single 35mm frame. Image of a old traditional structure is layered over a contemporary modern structure, to physically capture these structures on a physical medium, as they are sharing the same physical space in the city. The strong yet delicate ancient structure stand as a divine power amidst the modern sparkling sky scrapers. The modern constructions and overall growth are over powering the history but yet they stand as the supreme landmarks.

Ashish Verma / India TWO WORLDS ‘Two Worlds’ is a series of landscapes of Farnham: a small town with a perfect combination of countryside and modern life. On one hand you will see all the modern facilities like high-speed roads, high-end cars, beautiful houses and shops, while on the other hand you will see the countryside with lush green open fields and farms. These two aspects of Farnham are like two different worlds, which manage to blend into each other. Through this series, I have tried to show both aspects of Farnham connecting them by keeping St.Andrew’s Church in all the pictures.

Arun Vijai Mathavan / India THE VILLAGE ‘The village’ is a place of peaceful living, a place where there is no hurry to chase a hectic life. In India, a village is primarily distinguished by its poor standard of living, as opposed to that of cities. I was born and brought up in a village and subsequently moved to bigger towns, which helped me in many ways but also involved great inconvenience. Stepping out of India for my first time, I decided to explore villages in another country, I was curious to know what was considered as a village in developed countries. This is a study of villages around Farnham in the UK.

Amanda Whittle /UK PAYAL PARMAR, AnOther Mother Who am I to judge a situation, a place and a people I know nothing about? All I can attempt to express is what I saw from my own perspective and yet I hope to have captured an essence of what I was witness to, that of love, care, protection, passion and bold individual personalities. I had no illusions of what to expect or even if I would manage to gain access to a marginalised community in Ahmedabad. How wrong I was, and how wrong academic literature has proved to be yet again. Payal defies what is often commonly experienced in a hijra community; she is so much more than that.

Hao Xu / UK GANDHINAGAR POWDER In the series Hao explores this country visually as a outsider, by capturing people and animals straightly. These photographs compose a paragraph about harmony between human and animal, celebration culture, and religious landscape by pair images.

OTHER ACTIVITIES*

*Photographs in this chapter are taken by various participants of these events.

A series of practice based workshops held at NID organised by the UCA staff between 2008 and 2014 including Professor Anna Fox, Professor Karen Knorr, Reader Emmanuelle Waeckerlé, Lecturers David Moore, Martin Pover, Natasha Caruana, Afshin Dehkordi, Shiho Kito, Andrew Bruce and Maria Kapajeva.

A series of research workshops on photography in India, titled ‘Inside Out’, (funded by UKIERI) took place between September 2011 and February 2012 at three locations: University for the Creative Arts (Farnham, UK), International Centre of Photography (New York, USA) and National Institute of Design (Ahmedabad, India). The purpose of these workshops was to share knowledge and develop future collaborations. A proposal was made to initiate further research projects around archiving and the archive.

The exhibition ‘Travelling Light’ curated by Maria Kapajeva celebrated the creative outputs from the exchange project up to 2011. The work was exhibited at The James Hockey & The Foyer Gallery (Farnham, UK) in May 2011 and at Foyer Gallery in NID (Ahmedabad, India) in February 2012.

Dr Deepak John Mathews organised the first international photography conference ‘Chhaya’ at National Institute of Design, February 2012. Speakers came from the UK, the US and all over India and Nepal.

Research workshop between UCA and NID: ‘Design Futures: What next for Global Design education?’, January 2012.

NID staff Dr Deepak John Mathews (2011) and Vijaya Dinesh Deshmukh (2013) were awarded with Commonwealth Fellowship to work at UCA. Conference papers were given in Barcelona, London, Leeds and Hong Kong including at ‘Going Global’ and International Consortium for Educational Development.

Educational collaborative project ‘Collective Body’ between eight universities from Brazil, Canada, Finland, South Korea, India and UK including UCA and NID, between 2009-2012.

An exhibiton ‘A Photograph is Not An Option - Contemporary Photography by Women’ curated by Sunil Gupta with Veeramganakumari Solanki for FOCUS Photography Festival in Mumbai, in March 2013. The exhibition included work by Anna Fox, Joy Gregory and Karen Knorr. THrough the prism of work by emerging and mid-career women photogaphers based in India and abroad, this show looked at how women photographers have complicated photography as medium as well as celebrating their diversity worldwide.

An exhibition ‘Home and Away’ curated by Sunil Gupta at Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi, 2014. The exhibition included UCA and NID staff and graduates such as Adira Thekkuveettil, Anna Fox, Anusha Yadav, Charan Singh, Debra-Lorraine Grant, Dinesh Abiram, Pedro Maçãs, Rishi Singhal and Sunil Gupta.

Shiho Kito’s Research Fellowship at NID of Programme of Oversea Study for Upcoming Artists, Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunka-cho), Government of Japan, 2014-2015.

Goa International Photo Festival (GIPF) celebrates photography from India and abroad. In 2015 the festival concentrated on India, the US and the UK. Anna Fox and Amit Sheokand curated the show ‘Portraits from an Island’ as one of the main festival exhibitions.

Anna Fox’s workshop / 2008 One of the first practical workshops we did in India was an exercise both in photography and in getting to know each other. After a short lecture about portraiture the students were paired up; one UK student with one Indian student. They were given 2 hours to get to know each other and then they had to find props and costumes to enable them to act as each other. Then they went out in the city dressed as each other, performing each other and documenting the process with photography. When they came back Fox was ready with her 5x4� field camera and each couple had to take a pose that represented their partner and be photographed in the lush NID gardens.

Open Elective at NID with Maria Kapajeva and Shiho Kito / 2010 Two week workshop dedicated to traditions of black and white photography and introduced students with various techniques such as building up their own pinhole cameras, processing films and printing in a darkroom. Students managed to experiment and develop final projects which were exhibited at NID at the end of Open Elective.

Open Elective at NID with Emmanuelle Waeckerle / 2010 Workshop Body Through Body Talk & Jungle Fever trip Workshop is about freeing oneself from moral, social or cultural assumptions of notions of beauty, success and failure, using simple performance strategies to explore one’s body (as opposed to one’s mind) as a creative and thinking tool. A 12 hours bus trip in and around Ahmedabad using the JUNGLE FEVER user’sguide; 42 pages in 3 languages proposing activities and instructions that can be followed literally or metaphorically. The accompanying map refers equally to one’s mind or surroundings as potential sites of exploration.

‘Travelling Light’ exhibition / 2011-2012 The exhibition ‘Travelling Light’ curated by Maria Kapajeva celebrated the creative outputs from the exchange project up to 2011. It was an exhibition by 47 photography students and graduates from the University for the Creative Arts at Farnham and the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India. The exhibition took place at The James Hockey & The Foyer Gallery (Farnham, UK) in May 2011 and at Foyer Gallery in NID (Ahmedabad, India) in February 2012.

‘Travelling Light’ exhibition / 2011 James Hockey & Foyer Galleries Farnham UK

‘Travelling Light’ exhibition / 2012 Foyer Gallery at NID Ahmedabad, India

‘Home and Away’ exhibition / 2014 An exhibition ‘Home and Away’ curated by Sunil Gupta at Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi. The exhibition included UCA and NID staff and graduates such as Adira Thekkuveettil, Anna Fox, Anusha Yadav, Charan Singh, Debra-Lorraine Grant, Dinesh Abiram, Pedro Maçãs, Rishi Singhal and Sunil Gupta. In this exhibition we take a look at what eight photographers think about home and away from home. Without a deliberate bias, it’s interesting that the women are looking inwards to a domestic environment and the men are on the outside; either away or strangers in their own homes.

‘Portraits from an Island’ exhibition / 2015 Goa International Photo Festival (GIPF) celebrates photography from India and abroad. The festival is where practicing and future (youth) photographers, artists, writers, filmmakers, bloggers and creative people from all over the world come together, with a spirit of sharing their passion and vision through the most powerful art of visual storytelling: Photography.

In 2015 the festival concentrated on India, the US and the UK. Anna Fox and Amit Sheokand curated the show Portraits from an Island as one of the main festival exhibitions. ‘THE ONE SCHOOL GOA’ is the creator of GIPF. The One School Goa in a very short span of time has become a major force in the education of Photography, multi media and visual communication.

“Portraits from an Island” exhibition / 2015 Goa Photo Festival, installation shots

‘Have Some Tea’ / Intercontinental Drift is a showcase of work produced by 13 students as part of the exchange collaboration between Photography Design, National Institute of Design (NID) and University for the Creative Arts (UCA) Farnham, UK. This exhibition presents the selected works of students who were part of student exchanges in 2013 and 2014.Finding themselves in a foreign country, some students embarked on an outward journey to immerse themselves in unfamiliar landscapes, whilst others looked inwards to rely on memories, and dig into subconscious to familiarise and secure themselves in the world outside.

These photographs portray their attempts to observe and reflect these drifting worlds, inside and out.

‘Have Some Tea’ / Intercontinental Drift exhibition / 2014 India, installation shots

The NID - UCA exchange was a great experience. It was my first time visiting UK and England only seen through a television screen is very different than England experienced in person. It might sound clichÊd but the exchange really did play an important role in shaping my future as a photographer. Besides being exposed to and having access to various artists and exhibitions the most important aspect for me was the introduction to the color darkroom and alternative photographic practices. Perhaps this was the reason that I joined the MFA in Photography at UCA after finishing my course at NID. The exchange didn’t only give me a few weeks of a new culture, education and learnings but also gave a lifetime of opportunities and new friends.

Amit Sheokand / NID / 2009

The work policy of UCA encourages a collaborative environment for students which fosters holistic development to hone one’s design outlook. The opportunity to visit, experience and draw my own context with respect to photography studies in a whole new environment was a life changing experience. Also, UK being a multicultural society helped me broaden my perspective in all aspects of art, food, photography and lifestyle as a whole. The heterogeneity of the state provided me with a wide spectrum from across the globe to carry forward my research of photography in western context. I got an opportunity to explore various galleries like the Victoria and Albert Museum, London Art Fair, Tate Modern to name a few and increase my understanding with respect to various art forms. Lastly, interacting with new people has always been my drive and a major source of my design inspiration, and Farnham provided me with a whole new pool to delve into.

Maanik Sinha / NID / 2016

On one hand, and as an UCA’s Masters in Photography student, I was looking for the opportunity to develop my professional skills: both my practice and my research skills within the matters and questions of the picture. Conversely, the trip was important for my photographic work primarily because it is the involvement with the people and things close to me. In the end, I was trying to grasp the nature of and understanding of things.

Pedro Maçãs / UCA / 2013

The whole experience itself was new for me as I have never been outside my country before. At first I thought this would be a usual student exchange program but later I realised that it is more of a cultural exchange program rather than the former one. According to me the entire duration of the stay was planned in such a way that it benefits the students in understanding the contemporary practises and encourage us in understanding the whole notion of photography in the current scenario. We visited several galleries and Brighton Photo Biennial (BPB) during the stay and saw the works of various artists. The BPB in particular was an interesting part of my visit as it was the second photo festival that I attended so far. I got to see how the organisers of the event utilised different spaces and not just galleries to display the photographs. The colour darkroom processes that I learned at UCA enabled me to understand colour photography in a better way and encouraged me to apply my learnings in digital workflow of photographs. It was refreshing to go to Bourne Woods with Andrew Bruce to do the large format photography rather than sitting in a class room and taking turns to push the cable release. The tutorials that we had with Anna Fox and Karen Knorr provided me with valuable inputs that helped me to shape my project in a better way. It was unfortunate that I wasn’t able to attend the Paris Photo Festival at that time.

Hope to return to UCA sometime in future.

Sheik Mohamed Ishaq / NID / 2014

Interacting with students like ourselves from another country was an interesting experience. It gave me an opportunity to look at works being produced by students abroad individually as well as a school. It made me look back at ourselves, to see the cultural similarities and differences. Lastly, although after the initial collaboration there hasn’t been any further interaction with my partner, overall the exposure was good.

Shilpa Gavane / NID / 2010

Nik Adam Alekh Ajayaghosh Akash Anand Bhagwani Ankita Asthana Chetana B.M. Brendan Baker Mridul Batra Jaimin Bhavsar Shine Bhola Thom Bridge Andrew Bruce Natasha Caruana Amit Chahalia Anisha Crasto Stephen Cuss Liju Das Siddharth Stephen Dharamjit Grigoris Digkas Ishaan Dixit Suruchi Dumpawar Nikita Dutt Daniel Evans Niccolò Fano Andrew Ferguson Anna Fox Ying Gao Shilpa Gavane Yuri Gomi Joanna Greco Anita H. Grosz Prachi Gupta Sunil Gupta Gary Hampton Emily Harris Fiona Harvey Peter Haynes Laura Hensser John Hersey Timothy Hill Hannah Hughes Shampa Kabi Maria Kapajeva

Kim Jakobsen To Su Ji Abhishek Khedekar Emma Kirkwood Shiho Kito Karen Knorr Ioannis Koussertari Pradeep Kumar Chris Linaker Clare Long Pedro Maçãs Agnieszka Maksimik Neha Malhotra Poornima Marh Orande Mensink-Nouws Alexander Milnes Sheik Mohamed Ishaq David Moore Luke Norman Priyanka Oberoi Nathalie Paetzold Haris Pathirikodan Prabuddah Paul Maya Pillai Oliver Poddar Maniyarasam R Ravikiran Rangaswamy Chinar Shah Aditi Sharma Amit Sheokand Arunima Singh Charan Singh Anupam Singha Maanik Sinha Chris Spackman Kirsti Taylor Bye Adita Thekkuveettil Visaka Vardhan Ashish Verma Arun Vijai Mathavan Amanda Whittle

© 2018 Design: Maria Kapajeva Texts: The individual artists, authors and photographers Photographs: The individual artists and photographers The publication is produced with support of University for the Creative Arts, UK