‘A Shifting Gaze’ Talk Series: The Authorial in the Photo-Book

Yale-NUS College Library is pleased to announce an upcoming talk series, ‘A Shifting Gaze’, which is organised in collaboration with Offset Projects, a publishing firm in New Delhi, India. This series will cover aspects about photography in South Asia and the concept of photobook as a medium of expression.

The speaker, Anishka Varma, will conduct two talks and a book making workshop as part of this series. Please refer below for the sign-up information and details of the talks and workshop.

The Authorial in the Photo-Book 5 April 2022, 11.30am (SG time) “The emergence of the photobook in India and some parts of South Asia has allowed for photographers to own authorship of their work and place it on an international platform creating independent spaces for viewership and engagement separate from curatorial power structures and gatekeepers in the art world. Over the talk, we will engage with how the book has allowed photographers to be their own disseminators and have control over the narratives that emerge from their work. These are works created and conceptualised with the book as its form and relate to the urgency of the printed medium at its core.” Sign up here.

Previous Talk: How We See 14 February 2022, 7.00pm (SG time) “The language of the photograph in South Asia, and specifically in India, has been deeply impacted by the presence and role of a colonial gaze and the resultant emergence of a visual history from the region. Important movements and practices by photographers, activists and artists have played an important role in a growing comprehension of the adoption and rejection of the oriental, through the lens. The photograph and its recent accessibility in South Asia, in digital and analogue forms, is mediating questions of identity, creating a space for personal inquiry and experimentation. The talk looks at the growth of a photographic practice in a post-independent India and attempts to traverse through the journey of an emerging regional voice in South Asia, through the prism of its contemporary practitioners.” Sign up here.

About the Speaker

Anshika Varma is a photographer with an interest in personal, collective and mythical histories. Combining her curiosity to study cultural and social evolution with storytelling, her work often looks at the emotional connection between an individual and their environment. With photography and book making, she is interested in exploring the intricate relationship between memory and object as markers of one’s identity. The book becomes an important medium of work for the artist to align with her interest in the democratic dissemination of artistic expression and break notions of exclusivity in access and ownership of art. She is also the Founder of Offset Projects, an initiative that works to create channels of engagement with photography and book-making through talks, workshops, educational programming and a travelling library. She has also curated exhibitions for festivals within South East Asia.

Anshikas’ curations and works have been shown at Goa Photo (2019), Chennai Photo Biennale (2016, 2019), Angkor Photo Festival (2018), Tbilsi Night of Photography (2018), Kochi Biennale (2014), New York Biennale for Contemporary Art (2013), India Art Fair (2012, 2013), Florence Biennial (2009) and published by various national and international media.

She is a strong believer in the power behind inclusive education and has conducted art therapy programs for children from challenging social and economic strata for children of Anjali House, Cambodia (2013-Present), Clicking Together (Punjab and Chennai, 2017) and the Delhi Photo Festival (2013-2015).

About Offset Projects

In 2018, artist Anshika Varma founded Offset Projects out of New Delhi, India to explore the various engagements and sociological impact of receiving the world through creative expressions in visual language.

Offset Projects works to create channels of engagement in photography and book making through artist talks, workshops, residencies, curated reading rooms and collaborative exercises in publishing. The team believes that story telling lies at the heart of human creative energy and would like to make a space for collective engagement, meaningful critique and reflective inquiry.

The initiative runs a photo book library, the Offset Pitara, which has been creating active interventions in looking at the photo book as an artistic form in its own right. The Offset Press has also recently published, Guftgu, the first of its kind deconstructed photobook featuring works by contemporary photographers from South Asia. The Offset Bookshop is India’s only photobook store focused on independent and self-published books from South Asia.

(Images provided by Anshika Varma)