Throwback Thursday #2 | Watch 'Where the Birds Never Sing' online | A Presentation by Soumya Sankar Bose

In the last session under the series Throwback Thursdays with IFA, we hosted a conversation with photographer and IFA grantee Soumya Sankar Bose and John Xaviers, Programme Officer of our Arts Practice programme, about Soumya’s on-going body of photographic work titled Where the Birds Never Sing, with over 100 participants on zoom and facebook. We thank all those who joined us live. 

This conversation took the audiences through the artistic process, aesthetic visualisation and technical aspects of image-making behind the project that blurs the boundaries between documentary and staged photographs while creating awareness about a historical event, the documentary evidence of which has been systematically destroyed.

Watch the recording to experience the visual pursuit of a photographer unveiling the memories and repercussions of the Marichjhapi Massacre on its survivors

Click here for an article on the memories of the massacre titled Dwelling on Morichjhanpi by Annu Jalais published in the Economic and Political Weekly that Soumya referred to in this conversation. Click here to view images from the series on his website and follow his work on instagram.

Photographer Soumya Sankar Bose received a grant from IFA, under the Arts Practice programme towards the making of a photo-book on the memories of the massacre of Marichjhapi in 2018.

Soumya Sankar Bose has previously received grants from Magnum Foundation, Goethe Institut and Henry Luce Foundation, among others. Recently he received the FICA Amol Vadehra Art Grant 2019-20. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, NPR, Granta, The Telegraph, BBC, The Caravan, Conde Nast. His work has also been shown in Houston Center For Photography, Sepia Eye, Goethe-Institut, Experimenter and many more.

(If you would like to listen to the recording of the first session in the series where Poornima Sukumar, Shanthi and Chandri from the Aravani Art Project are in conversation with Sumana Chandrashekar, click on We Exist: Trans-ing the City)