Three Women and a Camera

56 min | English | 1998

The birth of a nation, and the promises it left unkept.

This documentary screening follows three women photographers, Homai Vyarawalla, Sheba Chhachhi, and Dayanita Singh, across two very different generations. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what stories can they tell about the state of our nation?

Vyarawalla, regarded as India’s first woman photojournalist, worked for three decades from the late 1930s, and her pictures carry the optimism of a new nation. Chhachhi and Singh, working decades later, grapple with the complexities and undelivered promises of the post-independence era. Director Sabeena Gadihoke brings their concerns into conversation: representation, the relationship between subject and camera, and the limits and possibilities of still photography in India in the late 1990s. The film won several awards, including second prize at Film South Asia, Kathmandu, in 1999, and a Certificate of Merit at the Mumbai International Film Festival in 2000.

This screening is hosted as part of MAP’s ‘Art is Life: Elsewhere,’ an offshoot series of programs hosted at partner venues across Bengaluru as part of MAP’s annual festival ‘Art is Life.’

Image Credit
Homai Vyarawalla, Delhi, mid-1950s. Courtesy of Sabeena Gadihoke.

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Venue: Seminar Halls