Though a late bloomer in India, photography is today definitely a space stealer, a feted form of high art. With this rising arc, there also springs up the need for a parallel platform — that of photography magazines. In the Capital, we have one, Punctum, a bi-annual meant to showcase pan-Asian photography. And then, we have Pix, a quarterly “largely aimed at giving space to contemporary practices in Indian photographers.” Much has been written about Punctum, the work featured in it. But not so much about Pix, now six-volume old.
Pix, a hobbyhorse of a clutch of young enthusiastic photographers from Delhi, is an interesting presentation. Kaushik Ramaswamy, photographer and one of the members of the editorial team of Pix, throws light on its emphasis, “Over a year ago, we started the magazine with help from Max Mueller Bhavan here. We are more art centric than just featuring images.” He calls the editorial team small.
“Besides me, there is Rahab Allana and people from a city-based photographers’ collective called Lucida.” A theme is selected for each quarterly and search begins for the right visuals. “This follows a lot of argument over what to include and what to leave out.”
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He says, “When we have themes like ‘Freedom’ and ‘Trespass’, it is not too difficult to find visuals but themes like ‘Suburbia’ is not easy.” Photography is used to build on the themes. Each visual is juxtaposed with a writer’s interpretation of it. So we have Delhi names like Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Shuddhabrata Sengupta among others adding their bit to the images. “We are the only one in the country to follow this format. It is not necessary that the writers write only prose, at times, they add meaning to the visuals with poetry. The idea is not prose or poetry but to allow the writers the freedom to expound on the frames the way they like,” says Kaushik.
Though it is a platform largely for Indian photographers, the forthcoming edition of Pix has the theme ‘Metamorphosis in Sri Lanka’ and works are by Lankan photographers though there are outsiders too. “We are launching it on October 12 in Colombo,” he says. Pix is distributed free of cost.