"Building upon long-term ethnographic research among image-makers in Delhi, Mumbai and other Indian cities, the author interrogates the dialogue between visual culture, technology and changing notions of political participation. The book explores selected artistic experiences in documentary and fiction film, photography, contemporary art and digital curation that have in common a desire to engage with images as tools for social intervention. These experiences reveal images' capacity not only to narrate and represent but also to perform, do and affect. Particular attention is devoted to the 'digital', a critical landscape that offers an opportunity to re-examine the significance of images and visual culture in a rapidly changing India. This volume will beof particular interest to scholars of visual and digital anthropology and cultures as well as South Asian studies"--
Digital technologies are a hotly debated topic in contemporary India. Image-Making-India offers insight into a country where tensions boil regarding the use of the digital as promoted by the government, and the use of the digital in creating visual arts. Favero uses examples gathered from documentary and fiction film, photography, contemporary art, theatre and design, to illustrate the extent to which the 'digital' offers an opportunity to examine the significance of images and visual culture in the creation of cultural identity in a rapidly changing India.
Based on ethnographic research into image-makers in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and the author's extensive lived experience of the culture, Favero interrogates the dialogue between visual culture, technology and changing notions of political participation in India. In so doing, he examines the dialectic between digital/visual practices and everyday life. Skilfully combining a pragmatic exploration of the evolving meaning of images in a digital landscape with an overarching theoretical framework, Favero moves towards an ingenious viewpoint on cultural transformation in contemporary India. This book is a hugely useful resource for those interested in visual and digital anthropology as well as Indian and South Asian studies.
Image-Making-India explores the evolving meaning of images in a digital landscape from the vantage point of contemporary India.
Building upon long-term ethnographic research among image-makers in Delhi, Mumbai and other Indian cities, the author interrogates the dialogue between visual culture, technology and changing notions of political participation. The book explores selected artistic experiences in documentary and fiction film, photography, contemporary art and digital curation that have in common a desire to engage with images as tools for social intervention. These experiences reveal images’ capacity not only to narrate and represent but also to perform, do and affect. Particular attention is devoted to the 'digital', a critical landscape that offers an opportunity to re-examine the significance of images and visual culture in a rapidly changing India.
This volume will be of particular interest to scholars of visual and digital anthropology and cultures as well as South Asian studies.
