A different lens: Photography with a mission by Vijay S Jodha
A series called The First Witnesses by photographer Vijay Jodha, 55, recently co-won the best photo series award given out
A series called The First Witnesses by photographer Vijay Jodha, 55, recently co-won the best photo series award given out as part of the British Journal of Photography’s Decade of Change initiative launched to use art to highlight the climate crisis. The black-and-white series features portraits of family members of Indian farmers who have died by suicide. In a classic frame-within-a-frame style, they hold up for the camera, and the world, photos of loved ones glaring out from behind garlanded frames. Some just hold up now-redundant passport-sized photos. Ten stills from the series were recently on display at the world’s first museum of climate change, in Hong Kong, and then at Climate Week NYC, an annual event held since 2009 to coincide with the UN General Assembly. Here’s a look at some of those images, and some of Jodha’s other work.
Born to Perform: Part of a four-year-old and ongoing photo project shot in India and aboard with performing artists from 20 countries. Chinese ballet dancer Ma Li has one arm while Zhai Xiaowei has one leg but together they have performed all over the world.(Photo: Vijay S Jodha)
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Joys of Christmas: From a series on migrant itinerants selling inexpensive items in central Delhi during Christmas for tiny margins.(Photo: Vijay S Jodha)
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Most of My Heroes: From an art project against mob violence. A series of poster-size faux stamps featuring forgotten victims of mob violence. Jaspal Singh was a baby murdered during the 1984 anti-Sikh violence. The zero value on the stamps indicates the value attached to such lost lives in India.(Photo: Vijay S Jodha)
Kashmir: Close to the Line of Control between India and Pakistan, a group of Kashmiri children try to spot their village on a globe gifted to their school by a visiting NGO.(Photo: Vijay S Jodha)
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V Mary holds up an image of her late father, Anthony Swamy. This is from the award-winning First Witnesses series that uses the frame-within-a-frame to memorialise Indian farmers who have died by suicide, and their loved ones.(Photo: Vijay S Jodha)
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Modus Vivendi (1000 people – 1000 Homes), 2000: In this self-portrait, a work of mixed media on canvas, Kallat appears as a swaggering, bespectacled juggler of heart and brain. The painting is an exploration of selfhood in the city of Mumbai, where he grew up and lives. The individual, lost in the multitudes, wanders in a state of perpetual disorientation, as reflected in the work. The radiating streaks of red, orange and green, reminiscent of thermal imagery, were achieved by texturing the canvas with layers of paint or canvas and then peeling off some parts to attain the desired visual effect.
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Sheer delight: While out surveying the remote Phoenix Islands Archipelago, Schmidt Ocean Institute scientists captured rare footage of a “glass octopus”, named so because it is completely see-through. What one does see when one shines a light on it is its optic nerve, eyeballs, and digestive tract. Even though this species has been known to science since 1918, scientists were forced to study about this animal through specimens found in the guts of predators, before this sighting.
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Herald / Harbinger is a permanent public art installation by Ben Rubin and Jer Thorp. It broadcasts the sounds of the Bow Glacier cracking and breaking 200 km away, to the centre of Calgary, one of Canada’s largest cities, almost in real time. The sounds and imagery shaped by data from a glacial observatory are broadcast through 16 speakers and seven LED arrays.
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Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022): The movie explores the many dimensions of parenthood and love through the story of a Chinese-American immigrant named Evelyn Wang (played by Michelle Yeoh) who, while struggling to run a failing laundromat business, uses her newfound powers to travel across multiple realities to save the world and work on her strained relationships with her loved ones. It’s a family drama that’s fast-paced, funny and, above all, tackles earnestly the idea of healing from intergenerational trauma.
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At first sight: For centuries, sunspots were thought to be Mercury passing across the Sun. By the early 17th century, with the invention of the telescope, astronomers could get a clearer look. In 1610, Galileo Galilei (who first used the telescope to observe space) in Italy and his British contemporary Thomas Harriot identified these as spots on the Sun. Seen here are 35 drawings of sunspots created by Galileo between June 2 and July 8, 1612.
