Tag: Manik Katyal

Establishment Earthquaker

?By Manik Katyal Emaho Magazine

Emaho got into a free-wheeling t?te-?-t?te with the legendary award-winning Bangladeshi photographer, Shahidul Alam to pry beyond his politics

Manik: In all your past interviews, you have mentioned how photography happened to you, so I will not ask that question, but what is photography for you? And your relationship with politics?
Shahidul: I am a very political animal and the reason I took up photography was because of my political position. Being concerned about the social situation in my country and globally, I happened to stumble into photography and discovered what a powerful tool it was; which happens to be the only reason why I practice it. I am fond of photography, I enjoyed images but at the end of the day that for me is not the point of the exercise. I continued to use photography in whatever way I can. Largely because, I see the strength of the medium and I recognise the potential. Having said that I think ? I have said this before ? that if tomorrow it ceases to effective, I?ll have no qualms about giving it up and taking something new.

My early experiments in figurative photography, the only available male nude, was me. Kingsbury. London. 1980. ? Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World
While my male friends were perfectly happy to photograph women in the nude, when I asked if I could photograph them, they became very coy. So it had to be self portraits! Kingsbury. London. 1980. ? Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

Continue reading “Establishment Earthquaker”

Space Invader ? Christian Caujolle

Interviewed by Manik Katyal: Emaho Magazine

Emaho caught up with celebrated French curator and photographer Christian Caujolle to see the view from his rarefied space.
Manik: It?s been more than 26 years roughly that you have started your career as a photo editor with Liberation and then you started curating; how has the journey and experience been so far?
Christian: I think that the first thing is that for different reasons the environment of photography and then the content?the aesthetics of photography radically changed. Let?s say that there are two main points which made those changes radical. One is the crisis of media business in printed paper and the second one is the invention of technology with the invention of development and coming of digital image. So the result in one way is a fact that the traditional media are in economic trouble but also may be conceptual trouble. As a consequence on what was the main or more visible area of photography from the 50s-80s, which was information, information with mostly photojournalism and part of documentary. That doesn?t means that photojournalism died, that means it?s no more at its top; that means that documentary photography, I will say in tradition which is an old tradition including from the beginning of 20th century when someone as Sander became more important than before in and after? there are big changes in the perception of photography with the development of the functionality of books, the exhibitions. Continue reading “Space Invader ? Christian Caujolle”