PIX- A Photography Quarterly is a new photography magazine edited by Rahaab Allana. The emphasis of this magazine is to look at diverse practices in contemporary photography in India. Each quarterly of this publication is also accompanied by an exhibition sponsored by Goethe Institut, Delhi.

Artists:

Amit Sheokand
Arne de Knegt
Bijoy Chowdhury
Gareth Kingdon
Mahesh Shantaram
Neha Malhotra
Pallon Daruwala
MadPaule
Sangeeta Rana
Sanjeev Thakur
Shuvankur Ghosh
Swarup Dutta

PIX is about investigating and engaging with broad and expansive fields of contemporary photographic practice in India, ranging from the application, conceptual standing and adaptability of photography to its subjects: its movement, transmission, appropriation and distinct relation to the allied arts.

PIX, the title for a photography quarterly, is a premise for how photography, as an evolving medium, has revealed the world in tangible as well as incongruous terms, allowing viewers and practitioners to question the photographer’s subjectivity together with the camera’s ‘framing’ of time and space (its ability to reveal, censor, alter and re-orient). The quarterly seeks not only to present photography in temporal, spatial or historical terms, but also in personal, self-conscious and aesthetic ways.

The structure for PIX is consciously based on practices, technologies, curating and circulations of photography in India today. It seeks to contemplate photography in the present and the predicament of a generation influenced by the digital medium. Photography has come to be viewed as a means of the everyday, in possessing the power to influence us and even lead us astray. Images are now animated beings, with desires of their own and have started being cast into contemporary notions of picture theory associated with the visual arts, literature and mass media. This quarterly therefore is about opening new vistas in iconology and the emergent field of visual culture. For example, the ‘city’ as geographic and abstract space plays an important role by being the subject of reportage or the motivation behind commissioned work. The city is itself a living being, and a gallery space. How do photographers use it?

Alternately, how/why do photographers seek their subjects? What are their inclinations and is it dependent on a vast consumption of images for mass media? The use of various format cameras such as the mobile phone camera are also being utilised for alternative reasons, personal and political. How does this alter the realness of representation? How have exhibitions in the last 10 years altered ways of viewing the domain of photography? Do young photographers provide an alternative to the mainstream? Who are these photographers?

Rishi Singhal