Tag: Chobi Mela VII

Chobi Mela VII in Better Photography

Chobi Mela 2013: Glimpses of What to Expect

The subcontinent?s premier photo festival, Chobi Mela, returns for its
seventh edition in January 2013. Better Photography Magazine tells you what to look forward to.








Chobi Mela in PDN

Male Caller in the Anteroom


? Karen Knorr
This image from?Karen Knorr?s India Song series was? selected as the signature promotional image for the Chobi Mela VI festival last year.? The multi-faceted international festival which gets under way January 25, 2013 in Dhaka, Bangladesh features work of established and emerging photographers. The theme for this year?s Chobi Mela VII festival is ?Fragility,? and the deadline for submissions is July 31, 2012. Information and submission guidelines are available at?www.chobimela.org.
Since its inception in 2000 Chobi Mela has explored contemporary photography with exhibitions that challenge traditional perceptions, as well as through workshops, discussions, seminars and lectures. Themes of past festivals included Differences, Exclusion, Resistance, Boundaries, Freedom, and Dreams. The festival is open to fine art photographers, conceptual artists, and photojournalists.

Fragility

Chobi Mela VII
International Festival of Photography Bangladesh, 2013

Theme: Fragility
Submission Deadline:?31 July, 2012
The sweeping gestures of photography have thrived on extremes. Great things, epic moments, the wretched, the vile, the dispossessed, the celebrated and the trodden, have all found themselves facing the lens. Photography has exalted suffering, celebrated the vain. Quiet moments, reflective spirits, the hesitant step, the furtive glance have rarely made headlines. Perceived as being unworthy of the shutter.
The shutter speed of 125th of a second reserved for momentous slices of time, never slows down enough to listen to the sighs of the silent. Photography therefore is a selective witness. The history it records, a filtered history. It is a filtration different from the dominant narrative of the victor that history has been guilty of. This is more insidious, as it seeps into the very core of our consciousness. I smile for my grandma’s camera. The photojournalist waits for my tear to drop. The moments in between go unrecorded. A staccato history of grand gestures and seminal moments fails to record the nuanced lives we all live. Continue reading “Fragility”