Photography can be seen to take on a self-assigned role of remembrance, recuperation and salvage, in turning its back resolutely on the spaces of transformation and the spectacle of change. As we go through Leena Kejriwal’s photographs of Calcutta, we see how such a charge of recovering an old Calcutta unfolds itself in all its detail and depth, how she subtly excavates the past in the present, and in the process, presents a very different ethnography of the contemporary city.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Leena Kejriwal
As a fine art photographer, Kejriwal is a licentiate member of the British Institute of Professional Photographers (LBIPP). She designed the book cover for Sahitya Akademi award winning novel, Kalikatha Via Bypass, 1999, for Alka Sarogi, and created a series of fine art photographs for the Hyatt Regency in Calcutta and Mumbai in 2001.She has tried to capture the essence of spaces like Flury’s for the Apeejay group, and Shiva on the streets of Mumbai for a book conceptualized by Rajiv Sethi, besides life in a brothel for an NGO working against human trafficking. Her oeuvre includes work in villages around Calcutta, documenting craft-based cottage industries. She has had four solo shows depicting life on the streets, Kalikatha, 2002, A Still Symphony, 2003,A Life of its Own, 2003 and 2004.Kejriwal was the Brand Ambassador for Fuji Film, India in 2005,and an artist-in-residence in France (under the Indo French cultural exchange programme) in 2005-06.An exhibition of her works depicting life there is currently traveling in India.
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