“No place is boring, if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.”
– Robert Adams

A reflection on the recently concluded Chennai Photo Biennale 2019 with photo-of-photos from the exhibits.

Conducted over a month-long period from Feb 22 to Mar 24, the Chennai Photo Biennale event was a celebration of moments captured by professionals, artists, hobbyists, and school students! I visited five venues that took part in the event.

Venue 1: Government Museum

There were three exhibits at the Government Museum, and some presentations/seminars were held in the Museum Theatre. The first one was a project called “Stories of the Ocean” by school students who were mentored by photographers. Most of the photos by the students (all taken in iPhones) looked very professional.

The second exhibit titled “Why Look at Animals?” was about human-animal division.

The third exhibit was a video installation that projected camel trade, mining, industrial growth on glass pieces that were on the ground. It was very interesting.

Venue 2: Focus Art Gallery

There was a small exhibit of photographs of Chennai taken by the members of the Photographic Society of Madras (PSM). The photos on people taken during their day-to-day life, like flower vendor, oil lamp vendor etc. were lovely.

Venue 3: Senate House

The Senate House inside University of Madras had around ten installations.

Inside the centre of the Senate House there were large horizontally hanging images related to fishing community.

Right behind the long images was a conceptual reading room where books were displayed for audience to look or read. Behind that there was something hanging on the wall that looked like a carpet with artistic designs. However, on closer look it was a collage of stamp-sized photos!

The staircase to the upper section of Senate House were made of wood and the walls were nicely designed with supporting pillars.

One of the main attraction among the exhibits on the upper floor was the 100-foot long sequence of black-and-white images from The Hindu archives.

Venue 4: Government College of Fine Arts

The Government College of Fine Arts was the main venue of Chennai Photo Biennale. It had several exhibits including screening of short films. The big gallery near the entrance gate had wonderful exhibits from Indian and overseas photographers. The subjects of each photo projects were varied, from serious and brutal realities of life to funny and thought-provoking concepts.

In the museum inside the college, were two exhibits juxtaposed with one another. One was photos of women athletes in Chennai and the other was photos of South Koreans dressed in aristocratic attire.

Venue 5: Madras Literary Society

Inside the Madras Literary Society, there were two very-large books and those contained photos of books taken by a Canadian photographer. I had to wear hand gloves to have a look at the photos.

On the corridors of the building were photos by an Indonesian artist about a horse caretaker in Bali who distributes children books to kids on the island using his horse as a library. The project reflected the horse caretaker’s journey in a day.

Hope you enjoyed this post.