Lecture: Women Photographers of India

Sabeena Gadihoke, assistant professor of visual
communications, Jamia Millia University, New Delhi

Homai Vyarawalla, press photographer, special guest

The birth of the Indian nation has been most famously chronicled by
names such as Margaret Bourke-White and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
However, a host of other photographers also documented the period
extensively and among them was India’s first woman photo-journalist,
Homai Vyarawalla. Straddling three decades, Vyarawalla’s rich body of
work is now being recognized as a significant archive of the period.
Some of the most iconic photographs of India’s first Prime Minister,
Jawaharlal Nehru, are integral to this collection. The presentation is
an illustrated journey through the rich photographic world of Homai
Vyarawalla and a discussion about how they both contribute and depart
from established nationalist iconographies. An eyewitness to the last
century, Homai Vyarawalla, now ninety-four years old, will be present
to take questions after the talk.

Sabeena Gadihoke teaches Video and Television Production at the Mass
Communication Research Centre at Jamia University in New Delhi. She is
also an independent documentary filmmaker and cameraperson and works
on the history of photography in India. Her biography on Homai
Vyarawalla, India’s first woman photo-journalist titled Camera
Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla was published by Mapin and the Parzor
Foundation in 2006.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008, 6pm
Lecture Hall, Sackler Art Museum
32 Quincy Street
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138

Free Admission