WOMEN
PHOTOGRAPHERS
FROM MIDDLE EAST & INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
by
Patrizia Pulga
Women
photographers are growing in numbers all around the world and
Eastern countries
are no exception.
I am really happy to present the works of two
women photographers who live and work in UAE (United Arab Emirates) whose pictures
are really different in style and subject.
Alia Al Shamsi is
a young photojournalist and the first professional female photographer of her
country.
Born and raised in Dubai from an Italian mother and a UAE father,
Alia studied photography and photojournalism in Australia and actually is a full
time photojournalist for two of Dubai’s newspapers: El Emarat El Youm and
Emirates Today and is working on a series of independent projects as a photographer,
curator and archivist. Recently Alia has been involved with images for advertising,
focused particularly on fashion and food. Alia's photographs have been exhibited
in Australia, Italy, Germany, UAE and USA as well as published in international
magazines such as National Geographic. |
Lateefa
Bint Maktoum is
a different kind of photographer who, after the studies in Visual Art in Zayed
University in her country, turned to photography using her background in painting
and drawing.
Her pictures are collages made from different digital photographs,
generally representing women, that – as she says – are visual representations
of my observations, combined with elements from my imagination, which together
form the final image, as in the picture The last look, one of most intense images
of Lateefa’s works.
Her images have been
exhibited in different towns of the Emirates, USA, Australia and Italy’s
Venezia Biennal of Art, 2011 in the Pavilion of United Arab Emirates.
Lateefa
is also the founder and the director of Tashkeel, a public studio that provides
facilities to visual artists and designers based in UAE. |
 |
In
Indian Subcontinent many women photographers are deeply involved in different
kinds of pictures; the most known is Dyanita Singh, born in 1961
in New Delhi, India, where she lives and works. She studied Visual Communication
at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad and Documentary Photography at
the International Center of Photography in New York.
Her first approach to photography is as
a photojournalist, producing black and white pictures about Indian domestic life,
especially urban-middle and upper-class families, about women living in a village
in Goa, and the famous documentation over a period of 13 years of Mona Ahmed,
a eunuch. In this long period she has mapped Mona’s intimate life; Dayanita,
in fact has documented several subjects, tracking complex and difficult lives |
Recently
she has produced lush photographs saturated with intense colour. This work, named
Blue Book, presents a landscape which exists as much in the artist’s imagination
as in the real world. Over the years, she has published several books, including
"Myself Mona Ahmed" and has shown at galleries in Rome, New York, Berlin,
London, Milan and Boston. Many of her works, are now part of the collection of
National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi.
She received the 2008 Prince Claus Award and
the 2008 Gardner Photography Fellowship, given by Peabody Museum at Harvard. |
 I
decided to also include Fariba Salma Alam, a visual artist who
lives and works in New York. Fariba is deeply influenced by Islamic culture of
Indian Subcontinent stemming from her family who has roots in Afghanistan and
Bangladesh. Fariba studied at New York and Columbia Universities where she learned
to create installations that integrate photography and tile works.
She says: “I suspend the female
form in a shifting gravity of architecture, tradition, abstraction and dreams.
I’m interested in fluidity between the intangible and real, otherness and
self. Religious and secular allegories—with themes of migration, travel
and fantasy—often inhabit my narrative influences”.
Fariba work
has been exhibited in the USA at The Queens Museum, MOCADA - Museum of African
Art in Brooklyn, MOCA - Los Angeles, as well as Shanghai (China) and in Italy. |
Ketaki
Sheth, born in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1957, received her Bachelor’s degree
in English Literature from Elphinstone College, Bombay University and she completed
her Master’s degree in Communication Arts from Cornell University in Ithaca
(New York) then, in the late 1980s, began taking pictures of Bombay under the
guidance of renowned photographer Raghubir Singh.
Her work includes pictures
about her native town focused particularly on the poverty, the population that
is increasing at an alarming rate (Mumbai more than 12 millions people) and the
high pollution. Here I present two pictures belonging to the book "Twinspotting"
about 100 B/W photographs taken of twins in India and London.
In her photographs
there is no pity or prejudice, but a deep interest to capture the vivacity of
the city in its various aspects.
Ketaki is well known worldwide and has exhibited
her pictures in India, France (Arles and Lille), Italy and USA. |
Samanta
Batra Mehta, born in New Delhi in 1975, is a young Indian visual artist,
actually living in New York.
After her Economics and Information Systems
studies in India and the London School of Economics, Samanta attended art-making
classes and workshops at the Bombay University and Drawing and Painting at the
Central St. Martins, London.
In her work, Samanta utilizes different medias:
painting, drawing, photography, found materials and installation to explore the
relationship between land and the body.
“I am interested in mapping connections
between human conditions and the environment that we inhabit,” she says.
“The female body is a microcosm for what is happening in the world today.
It can be plundered, degraded, controlled and maimed, much like the land is."
Samanta has exhibited her work at various international venues in Bombay, New
York, New Jersey, in Italy and in Paris |
The
pictures below were taken in Tamil Nadu, South India, for an assigment to document
the life of untouchable castes in small villages, one of the many reportages I
have presented about women’s condition all around the world.
Recently
as a photography teacher I have created workshops in Italian towns for immigrant
women so they may create their own photo album as means to streighten their own
identity in a transition moment. The results of the projects, named "IMMIGRANT
WOMEN AND THEIR IDENTITY: a tale by pictures" was obtained by using disposable
cameras. The images were wonderful and their participation was really exciting
and moving for all of us!
Since 2010 I have been involved in a research project “THE
IMAGES OF THE WOMEN IN THE MEDIA FROM THE STEROTYPE TO SELF REPRESENTATION"
for universities, women’s organisations and public institutions. I show
a video projection of how media represent women in Italy and in other countries
and how we women photographers present or represent ourselves. |
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