Dilip Simeon's blog

What has most drawn me to Singh’s work are the photographs collected in her books File Room and Museum of Chance . In these, we find black and white images of India’s vast state archives, storerooms and registry offices. As we leaf through these books, we become filled with an idea of poetic decrepitude and a sense of profundity: once upon a time, people slogged and toiled; they submitted countless requests; they sent petitions and filed lawsuits; they wrote about and classified each other’s activities; and, at the state’s encouragement and behest, they kept an uninterrupted record of it all. Eventually, all this vigorous activity came to an end, and what was left behind were these documents, these files, these bags, and the metal shelves and cabinets that hold and preserve them all. Singh’s black and white images of those stacks of lead-grey folders, of metal, of old and faded papers – all of which seem to be covered in dust even when they were not – make me aware of what I would cal...

The years leading up to the declaration of war between the Axis and Allied powers in 1939 were tumultuous times for people across the globe. The Great Depression had started a decade before, leaving much of the world unemployed and desperate. Nationalism was sweeping through Germany, and it chafed against the punitive measures of the Versailles Treaty that had ended World War I. China and the Empire of Japan had been at war since Japanese troops invaded Manchuria in 1931. Germany, Italy, and Japan were testing the newly founded League of Nations with multiple invasions and occupations of nearby countries, and felt emboldened when they encountered no meaningful consequences. German-made Stuka dive bombers in flight above Spain on May 30, 1939, during the Spanish Civil War. AP Photo The Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, becoming a rehearsal of sorts for the upcoming World War -- Germany and Italy supported the nationalist rebels led by General Francisco Franco, and some 40,000 foreign...

The photographer Jim Huylebroek travelled across the country with the international children’s agency Save the Children, from the drought-ravaged plains of the north to the freezing streets of Kabul, capturing the stories of children whose lives have been devastated by the humanitarian crisis, for the series titled: children on the edge of life. The images tell the stories of their fight for survival. Families making impossible decisions about which child they can afford to feed, and which will go hungry; mothers giving birth alone on dirt floors because they cannot afford to travel to hospital; children forced to work on the streets to put food on the table. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/feb/22/children-on-the-edge-of-life-in-afghanistan

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream Feb 19-26, 2022 Who are We A ‘Union of States’ or a ‘Nation’  | Karli Srinivasulu Remembering 2021 UP Panchayat Election Results  | Bharat Dogra Silence Is No Solution To Evil  | TJS George Lockdown As A Means of Controling Covid?  | Kobad Ghandy Five State Assembly Elections of 2022: Scenario and Consequences  | Prem Singh Che Guevara interviewed for All India Radio by Bhanumathy Rao, 1959 Hasta siempre Commandante Photos: When Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara visited India Playwright Arthur Miller after the reversal of his conviction for contempt on refusing to name alleged Communist writers to House Un-American Activities Committee in Aug 1958 New Labour Codes and the Working Class in India  | Kingshuk Sarkar Exploring the Imperial Connections of “Humanitarianism”  | Arup Kumar Sen Hijab & Saffron scarves on college campuses - Stop communal poison  | IMSD Russia -...

The epic wilderness of Greenland – in pictures. From Inuit hunters to the vast expanses of snow and ice, Danish photographer Carsten Egevang’s images spring from a three-decade fascination with the planet’s least-populated country  https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2022/jan/12/freeze-frames-the-wilderness-of-greenland-in-pictures

With India’s largest coal mining project slated to come up in West Bengal, approximately 21,000 people will need to be relocated and rehabilitated. The government aims to make the Deocha-Pachami-Dewanganj-Harinsinga coal block a model project with sensitive land acquisition and appropriate compensation. The local people, however, are anxious and uncertain of the transition as their jobs, homes and way of life is at stake… https://india.mongabay.com/2021/12/photos-in-anticipation-of-indias-largest-coal-mining-project/?utm_source=pocket_mylist More posts on mining Chitrangada Choudhury, Ajay Dandekar – dealing with Maoists... Chitrangada Choudhury Aga - Illegal mining's ground zero ... Dipankar Ghose: In the mining villages of Raniganj, broken roads, homes - and system / Vidya Krishnan: India's moral failure Naxalites should lay down their arms and challenge the ruling class to abide by the Constitution

This annual contest recognizes photos of some of the world's most historic spots.  Click through to see the rest of 2021's acclaimed images. Entries were judged on "originality, composition and technical proficiency" as well as the context of the image and the story behind it. The year's overall winner was Steve Liddiard's image of Wales' Whiteford Lighthouse.  https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/historical-photographer-of-the-year-2021/index.html More posts on/with photos

I've spent most of my career as a storyteller, using stunning visual imagery and compelling personal stories to move people. Moving people is exactly what's needed to save our planet. We cannot afford to stand still any longer, let alone go backwards.  Too often, the very real threat of climate change can feel either distant or overwhelming - robbing the allies we need of their sense of urgency and their drive to take action. But I've seen how storytelling can turn apathy into action. Building connection through storytelling is the key to unlocking critical climate action in this decade. In 2017, I published a photograph of an  emaciated polar bear  on a barren arctic tundra using it as an entry point into a conversation about climate change. Millions of people saw this image and the resulting global dialogue provided unprecedented insight into the work still necessary to create a large enough movement to activate solutions. https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/cristin...

Seen by their guardians as sacred, Ethiopia’s church forests are protected and cared for by their priests and their communities. Photographer  Kieran Dodds  has brought together his images of these oases and the story of the country’s spiritually driven conservation movement in a new book,  The Church Forests of Ethiopia .. South of the Sahara, and just north of the Great Rift Valley in landlocked  Ethiopia , the Blue Nile flows from Lake Tana, the largest lake in the country.  Radiating out from the sacred source is a scattering of forest islands, strewn across the dry highlands like a handful of emeralds. At the heart of each circle of forest, hunkered down under the ancient canopy and wrapped in lush vegetation, are saucer-shaped churches – otherworldly structures that almost seem to emit a life force. And in a sense they do… https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/08/gardens-of-eden-the-church-forests-of-ethiopia-aoe

NB : India's Prime Minister has warned the world of the threat of ' regressive thinking .' The  rhetorical artistry of our Great Leader is indeed admirable; although I think his camp-followers will miss the irony. The article below describes what can happen in India in the name of politically correct nationalism. And here's another:  A Grateful Nation . We should be thankful we live in such a progressive nation.  DS Photobombing death: Narcissism is a useful example of the banality of evil The photographer jumping on a man shot dead by policemen in Assam on Thursday is a creature of two intersecting histories. The first is the history of State-sponsored majoritarianism, which in India generally and Assam particularly, is beginning to devolve into a form of fascism. The photographer knew that stomping on Muslims, dead or alive, was sanctioned by the zeitgeist. But he was also performing for the camera in a way that is the signature behaviour of this digital age. The clip...

Pulitzer Prize-winning Indian photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was killed on Friday while covering a clash between Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters near a border crossing with Pakistan. Working for Reuters since 2010, Siddiqui covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Rohingya refugees crisis, the Hong Kong protests and Nepal earthquakes. Siddiqui was part of a Reuters team to win the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for documenting  the Rohingya refugee crisis.  Here's a selection of his work: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57862610

NB : The comment below is taken from Jairus Banaji's Facebook page dated June 13, 2021 The title of this blogpost is me being sarcastic. I had originally titled it  Sovereignty of Capital or Nation as property, but   thought it redundant.  No comment is required. Readers might be interested in this investigation , and Bharat Bhushan's report on  the Scania scandal . Some  journalists  retain their integrity. The link to the photo contains the source.  DS A photo of exceptional value . It shows Indira Gandhi dining with Dhirubhai Ambani soon after her massive sweep back to power in January 1980, something that Dhirubhai indirectly helped to engineer by providing the funds that weaned Charan Singh’s party from the Janata government, bringing about the latter’s collapse and thus the Lok Sabha elections that eventually followed. Dhirubhai paid for a lavish dinner at the Ashoka Hotel in Delhi. Here’s what Hamish McDonald says about it in his (unauthorized) ...

NASA astronaut  Michael Collins , who stayed behind in the command module of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969 while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin travelled to the lunar surface to become the first humans to walk on the moon, passed away on Wednesday April 28, at age 90, his family said.  Selected as part of NASA’s third group of 14 astronauts in 1963, Collins flew in space twice. His first spaceflight was on Gemini 10 in 1966, in which he and Command Pilot John Young performed orbital rendezvous with two spacecraft and undertook two extravehicular activities (EVAs, also known as spacewalks). On the 1969 Apollo 11 mission he became one of 24 people to fly to the Moon, which he orbited thirty times. He was the fourth person (and third American) to perform a spacewalk, the first person to have performed more than one spacewalk, and, after Young, who flew the command module on Apollo 10, the second person to orbit the Moon alone. Collins took the photo above of the Apollo 11 lunar modu...

I never seemed to have time to study the birdlife around me before; I just liked the idea they were around and I enjoyed their dawn chorus over the years. In a fairly small space I am pleased to be visited regularly by many species of bird. My friendly robins follow me around listening to my mutterings (they later bring some of their youngsters), but most of the birds are extremely shy and need coaxing with refreshments to stay around.  Now, during my isolation vigil, I watch them as carefully as I did when photographing people.... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/26/charmed-in-lockdown-garden-birds-by-denis-thorpe-in-pictures

One warm June weekend 61 years ago, a scruffily bearded Argentinian on his way from Cuba to Cairo stopped over in Madrid. With almost a day to kill between flights, he did what any tourist of the time would have done: explored the city, visited a bullring, had breakfast and did a little shopping. He was, however, no ordinary tourist. A photograph taken very early that Sunday morning shows the unmistakable figure of Che Guevara standing in boots, beret and battle fatigues, one hand hooked over his belt and the other clutching a newspaper.  Che Guevara in Madrid, 1959. Photograph: César Lucas The image, shot by a teenage photographer, is one of 160 pictures in a book chronicling the Spanish capital’s richly turbulent social, political and cultural history from 1900 to the present day.  In its glossy pages, a Zeppelin flies over Gran Vía in 1930 – presaging the German and Italian warplanes that would darken Madrid’s skies later the same decade; the Beatles take a cigarette break ...

India's greatest leader had moved to a village called Segaon two years earlier. He had renamed it Sevagram or a village of service. He built an ashram, a commune which was home to  "many a fateful decision which affected the destiny of India" . Gandhi had moved in with his wife, Kasturba, and some followers. There was also a steady stream of guests. Kanu Gandhi, a callow young man in his 20s and a grand nephew of the Mahatma, was also there. Armed with a Rolleiflex camera, he was taking pictures of the leader. He had wanted to become a doctor, but his parents had goaded him to join Gandhi's personal staff doing clerical work, looking after accounts and writing letters at the ashram. Kanu Gandhi had developed an interest in photography, but Gandhi had told him there was no money to buy him a camera. The nephew did not relent. Finally, Gandhi asked business-man  Ghanshyam Das Birla  to gift 100 rupees ($1.49; £1.00) to Kanu so that he could buy the camera and a roll of ...

Tributes are flooding in for photographer Li Zhensheng, who documented the violent and tumultuous years of China's Cultural Revolution in the '60s and '70s. A spokesperson for The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, which published a book containing sensitive images Li once kept hidden under his floorboards, this week confirmed his death at the age 79 and described his work as "incomparable."  Li's photos represented "the most comprehensive and systematic visual archive" of Communist leader Mao Zedong's devastating campaign, the statement said, praising the photographer's ability to "generate a feeling of empathy about the disaster." Li's agency, Contact Press Images, announced his death with an  Instagram  post saying that he leaves behind "an inestimable photographic legacy," while the UK's Photographers' Gallery, one of the dozens of institutions to share his shocking pictures with the world,  tweeted  ...

Remembering Wildlife, the groundbreaking charity picture book series, has announced the 10 winners of its photography competition to appear in its forthcoming book, Remembering Cheetahs , which will help to protect the world’s most endangered big cat. There are only around 7,100 cheetahs left in the wild. The book will be published on Monday 12 October and the winning images will be printed alongside stunning images donated by many of the world’s leading wildlife photographers Robert L Keyser III: taken in the Maasai Mara, Kenya See more photographs:  Remembering Cheetahs   South Africa: Elephants made a journey to pay their last respects JOSH DZIEZA - Save the Honeybee, Sterilize the Earth South Georgia: The lost whaling station at the end of the world

The World Aflame , by Marina Amaral and Dan Jones Reviewed by  by Sam Wollaston She starts by sourcing black and white photos: George V on horseback; the young Winston Churchill, fresh-faced and confident; momentous events – life in the trenches, the Christmas truce; suffrage and suffering; the Great Depression, famine, fascism, Hitler and Mussolini; more war, genocide and destruction, the atom bomb, liberation; a little bit of love as well. And she colours them, digitally. A young refugee shelters in a church in Barcelona in 1939, after her home in Madrid was bombed during the Spanish civil war : Margaret Bourke-White/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images We’ll come back to the process. But first, while we’re talking about modern-day resonance, Amaral says the recent rise of populism and the far right in many countries (not least her own) is part of what motivates her work. The warning signs are there, she says. “You read some of the things people were saying then, ...

A selection of archive photographs to mark the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day Selected by Natasha Rees-Bloor US soldiers hug a woman in Piccadilly Circus, London,  as they celebrate Germany’s surrender on 7 May 1945;  Photograph: AP  see more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2020/may/08/dancing-in-the-streets-ve-day-celebrations-in-1945-in-pictures Kirill Medvedev - Europeans and Russians should remember what bound them together: anti-fascism :   this conflict between liberals with a rose-tinted view of the west and Russian reactionaries who decry all things European obscures what once bound Russia and Europe together. In 1945, the west and the Soviet Union together defeated nazism and concluded that fascism was an absolute evil, beyond the realm of acceptable politics. As we commemorate the  75th anniversary  of the end of the second world war in Europe, with fascist and far-right politicians gaining power once again across...