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Gurnaaz Kaur
After a successful Dehradun edition, Sandesh will be presenting a photography festival for transgender community in Chandigarh. This three-day festival will be held at multiple locations, including Panjab University.
The brainchild of third year law student Manik Katyal, Sandesh is meant for marginalised communities. “It is a photography festival that aims to democratise photography across the country and bridge the creative gap between weaker communities and the Indian society at large,” Manik explains. He is of the view that powerful art needs to be taken out of fancy galleries and museum and taken to the doorsteps of the people.
On the thought behind bringing this festival to life, Manik says, “Sandesh was launched in December, 2017 when I realised that most of the festivals/organisations are simply trying to please each other, trying to satisfy their artistic ego by focussing on the same kind of audiences each time. I feel photography as a medium becomes ‘useless’ and ‘aimless’ if not celebrated with the masses.”
He claims it is the first such photography festival in India to shed light on the life of transgenders from around the world and his aim is to open minds about the community within Indian society as well as the global society at large.
“Discussions on the transgender rights are entering the mainstream discourse more than ever in India. Despite the surge in media attention and growing acceptance of transgender identities, systemic and social-cultural barriers remain firm along with the lack of sensitivity around this issue. Through photographs, I want to give people a closer look at the community and bring about a change in the minds of people,” Manik says.
Manik plans to travel around the country with Sandesh that has participation from Japan, Peru, Germany, USA, Poland, Bangladesh, Holland, Israel, Australia and many other countries. “Most of the photography-related events/festivals/exhibitions happen in bigger metro cities in India. We totally want to change that mindset. World-class photography should be available for all. Hence we wish to travel to tier-2 and tier-3 cities, towns, villages in order to inspire more people across the country,” he shares.
While this is a one man’s initiative there are like-minded people who participate as volunteers to make it a strong team. “I have few volunteers who certainly believe in the ideology of empowering the masses with powerful visual photography. I totally believe in using photography for bringing social-impact,” Manik says.
From July 13-15 at Panjab University, Chandigarh.
gurnaaz@tribunemail.com
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