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Wiktoria Wojciechowska
Wiktoria Wojciechowska
Wiktoria Wojciechowska

Wiktoria Wojciechowska

Country: Poland
Birth: 1991

Born 1991, Lublin, Poland, Wiktoria Wojciechowska lives and works in Lublin and Paris. Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland, Wiktoria was the 2015 winner of the Oskar Barnack Leica Newcomer Award for Short Flashes, portraits of drenched cyclists captured on the streets of Chinese’s metropolis.

Between 2014 and 2016 she worked on the series Sparks, a portrait of a contemporary war based on the stories of people living in the Ukrainian conflict. This series received several awards, such Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie New Discovery award’s public prize, Madame Figaro prize and the Prix pour la Photographie, Fondation des Treilles.

Labirinto (2017-2019)
Labirinto explores the architecture seen as a vector for an ideology, spreading in the inhabitants' thoughts. Architecture stays longer than its creators and might still smuggle fundamental ideas and atmosphere of passed days. Labirinto project is a starting point to discuss how the architecture influence inhabitants and if a city, structured as a symbol of fascist ideology, can become a dwelling for strangers.

Wiktoria Wojciechowska works in the area of Agro Pontino in Italy: formerly marshes, which were, throughout centuries, a challenge for the authorities. The Romans, Popes and Napoleon have all tried to drain, recultivate it and build new settlements. The one who achieve the goal was Benito Mussolini, with the help of the hard work of World War I combatants.

At the beginning of the '30s, the project of the foundation of the New Cities (Città nuove) started. The best Italian architects of these times were involved to draw the net of streets on the Pontine plain as on a blank page. They were to arrange the monuments and neighborhood buildings - following the current of rationalist architecture, adopted by the fascist as the official style of the ideology - of five cities: Littoria, Pontinia, Sabaudia, Aprilia and Pomezia. Designed in the model of "the rural city", they should serve as a renewal of civilization (Bonifica della cultura) and the so-called Mussolini's Arcadia for a "purified nation" of New Italians.

This is how Littoria has been conceived, in 1932, from the mud and has been raised as the first of the five Mussolini's New Cities. Littoria was called the "jewel of Mussolini" and radiated by the combination of a stellate network of streets and curved ring roads, all converging towards the central square (Piazza del Littorio, now Piazza del Popolo). The labyrinth-like city was awaiting the new residents coming from the entire Italy to live in the empty buildings and appreciate the monumental solutions drawn upon the Roman Empire tradition.

After World War II, the city was rebaptized to Latina to obliterate its fascist past and became a temporary asylum for displaced Italians and migrants. Between 1957 and 1991, 80 000 foreigners passed by the refugee camp. They were coming from Eastern Europe, fleeing the communist regimes, from Vietnam, Northern Africa, etc. Despite the official closing of the camp in 1991, migration is still an ongoing process. Today, the majority of newcomers originate from sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria, Gambia, Ghana, Mali…

The artist describes her work: In the middle of the day, during "the siesta", when the city is hot and stuffy, the streets become empty. The pale facades of the buildings reflect the sunlight like mirrors and hurt the eyes. As in De Chirico's paintings, the palisades are playing with lights and shades. The emptiness creates an illusion that we are back in the 30s. Only the scratches and colored patches on the walls unmask the timeworn city. From time to time, human figures flash by in the sun. These are those who get lost in this labyrinth, not knowing the rules of the city. They barely arrived there, but who gets into the labyrinth once, might not be able to wriggle out ever.

Today in front of Palazzo M - built in the shape of the initial of Mussolini, a queue of immigrants is standing and waiting for their documents.

Wiktoria Wojciechowska observes the city - silent witness of changing times - and recent immigrants, far from being integrated. During the conversations, they often mention the discrimination, preconceived ideas, and the fear of locals; their superiority coming from the colonial past, racism. They feel suspended, awaiting decisions and documents, trapped in the city space. The locals expect to move the immigrants out of the cities; they are not to be seen, as they "change the landscape", they should be invisible. The ideology, which sponsored the construction of the cities, is still lying under their foundation. Hidden but yet vivid, deep inside the consciousness. Looking further, Labirinto can be the metaphor of the current sociopolitical situation of all Europe, where newcomers from other continents are seeking asylum and acceptance. The fear of locals (who might have been migrants too) remains, and politics don't promote reconciliation. The policy of fear enables the authorities to seize control of the population's thoughts and define the enemy.

The works of Wiktoria Wojciechowska are juxtaposing the fascist architecture - undefined corners of streets, scattered walls, and remains of fascist sculptural iconography - and the portraits of recently arrived migrants. As they wander through a temporarily deserted city, occupying the scene of a petrified ideology, the public space, they reveal a striking contrast with this ideology embodied in the architecture.
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Roger Ballen
United States
1950
One of the most influential and important photographic artists of the 21st century, Roger Ballen's photographs span over forty years. His strange and extreme works confront the viewer and challenge them to come with him on a journey into their own minds as he explores the deeper recesses of his own. Roger Ballen was born in New York in 1950 but for over 30 years he has lived and worked in South Africa. His work as a geologist took him out into the countryside and led him to take up his camera and explore the hidden world of small South African towns. At first he explored the empty streets in the glare of the midday sun but, once he had made the step of knocking on people's doors, he discovered a world inside these houses which was to have a profound effect on his work. These interiors with their distinctive collections of objects and the occupants within these closed worlds took his unique vision on a path from social critique to the creation of metaphors for the inner mind. After 1994 he no longer looked to the countryside for his subject matter finding it closer to home in Johannesburg. Over the past thirty five years his distinctive style of photography has evolved using a simple square format in stark and beautiful black and white. In the earlier works in the exhibition his connection to the tradition of documentary photography is clear but through the 1990s he developed a style he describes as 'documentary fiction'. After 2000 the people he first discovered and documented living on the margins of South African society increasingly became a cast of actors working with Ballen in the series' Outland (2000, revised in 2015) and Shadow Chamber (2005) collaborating to create powerful psychodramas. The line between fantasy and reality in his subsequent series' Boarding House (2009) and Asylum of the Birds (2014) became increasingly blurred and in these series he employed drawings, painting, collage and sculptural techniques to create elaborate sets. There was an absence of people altogether, replaced by photographs of individuals now used as props, by doll or dummy parts or where people did appear it was as disembodied hands, feet and mouths poking disturbingly through walls and pieces of rag. The often improvised scenarios were now completed by the unpredictable behaviour of animals whose ambiguous behaviour became crucial to the overall meaning of the photographs. In this phase Ballen invented a new hybrid aesthetic, but one still rooted firmly in black and white photography. In his artistic practice Ballen has increasingly been won over by the possibilities of integrating photography and drawing. He has expanded his repertoire and extended his visual language. By integrating drawing into his photographic and video works, the artist has not only made a lasting contribution to the field of art, but equally has made a powerful commentary about the human condition and its creative potential. His contribution has not been limited to stills photography and Ballen has been the creator of a number of acclaimed and exhibited short films that dovetail with his photographic series'. The collaborative film I Fink You Freeky, created for the cult band Die Antwoord in 2012, has garnered over 125-million hits on YouTube. He has taken his work into the realms of sculpture and installation, at Paris' Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (2017), Australia's Sydney College of the Arts (2016) and at the Serlachius Museum in Finland (2015) is to name but a few. The spectacular installation at Les Rencontres d'Arles 2017, "House of the Ballenesque" was voted as one of the best exhibitions for 2017. In 2018 at the Wiesbaden Biennale, Germany, another installation "Roger Ballen's Bazaar/Bizarre" was created in an abandoned shopping centre. Ballen's series, The Theatre of Apparitions (2016), is inspired by the sight of these hand-drawn carvings on blacked-out windows in an abandoned women's prison. Ballen started to experiment using different spray paints on glass and then 'drawing on' or removing the paint with a sharp object to let natural light through. The results have been likened prehistoric cave-paintings: the black, dimensionless spaces on the glass are canvases onto which Ballen has carved his thoughts and emotions. He also released a related animated film, Theatre of Apparitions, which has been nominated for various awards. In September 2017 Thames & Hudson published a large volume of the collected photography with extended commentary by Ballen titled Ballenesque Roger Ballen: A Retrospective. Halle Saint Pierre in Paris opened an exhibition September 6th 2019 titled The World According to Roger Ballen. Thames & Hudson published the book in French and English to accompany the show. His work took over the entire space for more than a year closing in January 2021. The World According to Roger Ballen has since been successfully exhibited at Jakopic Gallery in Ljubljana, Slovenia; as well as the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague. In October 2020, Hatje Cantz released Roger the Rat which was produced in Johannesburg between 2015 and 2020. Here Ballen creates and documents a part-human, part-rat creature who lives an isolated life outside of mainstream society. This book presents the cycle of photographs in the form of an impressive show that keeps the reader reflecting long after the last page. Ballen also produced a film that accompanies the book launch during October 2020. Roger Ballen has published over 25 books internationally. His works are in more that 50 of the most important international museum collections. In the fall of 2022, Thames and Hudson released a second volume of Ballenesque Roger Ballen: A Retrospective in paperback. Roger Ballen will be one of the artists representing South Africa at the Venice Biennale Arte 2022 in Italy.
Younes Mohammad
Younes Mohammad is Born in 1968 in Dohuk, Iraq. He's a Kurdish freelance photographer mostly active on assignments for newspapers, magazines, etc. He spent his life in Iran as a refugee from 1974 - 1998 and graduated with an MBA University of Tehran. Photography was his passion but he had no chance to follow it while the war situation was still continuing Under Saddam's time. In 2011 he quits his job and starts his journey as a photographer. His work has been exhibited internationally and published widely in publications. He has received numerous awards. He is now based in Erbil, Iraq. About Open Wounds "I start to work on a long-term project documenting the sacrifices of Kurdish Peshmerga in the fight to put down ISIS. Speaking with hundred Peshmerga, taking intimate portraits of the wounded fighters, their families, and documenting both the stories in the battle and their ongoing struggles to navigate post-conflict life. Through the work, I found stories of immense suffering. Fighters who took up arms, not because they were required to do so, but because it was right and it was what had to be done. These men, often fighting side by side with brothers, uncles, cousins, fathers, and sons, knew that the freedom and survival of their people were at stake. As they retold stories of watching family and friends killed in front of them and of battles they did not expect to survive, they simultaneously shed tears for the losses and for the pride they had in what their comrades and they had done. Almost all of the men showed severe physical injury. Arms, legs, and eyes lost. Bodies so riddled with bullet and shrapnel wounds that simple movement created wincing pain. These men also showed the signs of the heavy burdens of the mental traumas, of PTSD, and of memories that would not leave them. Despite all they suffered, they often said they would go back to the fight again if ever called. They would do this for their children, their families, their people, and for the wider world. Tragically, their suffering does not end having returned home. The men face new challenges, such as getting prosthetic limbs, ongoing care, providing for their families despite their debilitating injuries, and more. They wonder, if they would give everything to help protect the world, will the world help them or forget them now that they have put down their guns. I have hope that, through this work exploring conflict and post-conflict humanitarian issues, the World may better understand what these men and their families have given for the Kurdish people, the region, and, in fact, the world. " -- Younes Mohammad
Hiroji Kubota
Japan
1939
Hiroji Kubota (born 2 August 1939) is a Japanese photographer, a member of Magnum Photos who has specialized in photographing the far east. Born in Kanda (Tokyo), Kubota studied politics at Waseda University, graduating in 1962. In 1961 he met the Magnum photographers René Burri, Elliott Erwitt, and Burt Glinn. He then studied journalism and international politics at the University of Chicago, and became an assistant to Erwitt and Cornell Capa, in 1965, a freelance photographer. Kubota photographed the 1968 US presidential election and then Ryūkyū islands before their return to Japan in 1972. He then photographed Saigon in 1975, North Korea in 1978, and China in 1979–85, and the USA in 1988–92, resulting in books and exhibitions. Kubota won the Mainichi Art Prize in 1980,[2] and the Annual Award of the Photographic Society of Japan in 1981. Three of his publications won him the first Kodansha Publishing Culture Award in 1970: "Black People", and essays on Calcutta and the Ryūkyū islands.Source: Wikipedia Hiroji Kubota sounds a little over-the-top when he insists his "life is meaningless" without photography. But a glance at his latest and 19th book will convince you he is absolutely right, given how his life has been intertwined with some of Magnum's legendary photographers, like René Burri, Burt Glinn and my father, Elliott Erwitt. He started out working with some of them as a fixer and translator, even though he refused payment at first. "I was brought up comfortably and didn't need it," he said. He did, however, accept a beat-up Leica M3 from Burri. His life changed when he got the first edition of Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment a month later. "When I opened it, I said, 'My gosh, what is this?" he recalled. "That motivated me. That's when I became serious." His fate was sealed when Burri showed him a Swiss magazine that featured his Gaucho pictures. "It shocked me like crazy," he said. "I knew then I wanted to be a photographer." The results of those personally decisive moments are evident in Aperture's Hiroji Kubota Photographer a retrospective covering 50 years of his work. I met Hiroji almost that long ago, because my father, Elliott Erwitt, sponsored him when he first came to America, even picking him up at the TWA terminal at Kennedy Airport. They had met when Hiroji worked as a fixer on one of my father's early trips to Japan, in 1962, to illustrate Robert Donovan's book PT 109, about John F. Kennedy's World War II exploits. Hiroji was my father's translator when he photographed the captain and crew of the destroyer that famously cut Kennedy's boat in two. That kind of work led to his meeting other influential photographers who would encourage him, eventually bringing him to New York, where he became a familiar figure at the Magnum offices. Back then, the agency was a small, international and slightly dysfunctional family that was accessible if you met the right people, which he did. Cornell Capa, a Magnum photographer, "adopted me literally, not legally," he said. "He had no children, so he needed a son, a fairly well-behaved son who could cook for him." Capa, who entertained "big shots" at his Fifth Avenue apartment, helped Hiroji make a few extra dollars by having him cook. Burt Glinn also hired Hiroji as an assistant to help him get by. Hiroji showed similar ingenuity when he spent the better part of a year photographing in Chicago, where he ran an ad hoc Japanese catering business every other weekend to help pay the bills. By 1967, he was a successful photographer firmly ensconced at Magnum, and it was time to return to Japan. He has proved to be a remarkably tenacious photographer who immerses himself in a story and returns to it until he is satisfied. He has managed to get to places others can't - like his unlimited access on many trips to China, when travel within the country was still limited. He would talk government officials into allowing him the time and access he needed to achieve his purpose. Same with North Korea; he has made countless visits - at its invitation - at a time when it was essentially a closed country. -- By Misha ErwittSource: The New York Times During a visit by Magnum members to Japan in 1961, Hiroji Kubota came to know René Burri, Burt Glinn and Elliott Erwitt. After graduating in political science from Tokyo’s University of Waseda in 1962, Kubota moved to the US, settling in Chicago, where he continued photographing while supporting himself by working in a Japanese catering business. He became a freelance photographer in 1965, and his first assignment for the UK newspaper The Times was to Jackson Pollock’s grave in East Hampton. In 1968, Kubota returned to live in Japan, where his work was recognized with a Publishing Culture Award from Kodansha in 1970. The next year he became a Magnum associate. Kubota witnessed the fall of Saigon in 1975, refocusing his attention on Asia. It took him several years to get permission to photograph in China. Finally, between 1979 and 1984, Kubota embarked on a 1,000-day tour, during which he made more than 200,000 photographs. The book and exhibit, China, appeared in 1985. Kubota’s awards in Japan include the Nendo Sho (Annual Award) of the Japanese Photographic Society (1982), and the Mainichi Art Prize (1983). He has photographed most of the Asian continent for his book Out of the East, published in 1997, which led to a two-year project, in turn resulting in the book Can We Feed Ourselves? Kubota has had solo shows in Tokyo, Osaka, Beijing, New York, Washington, Rome, London, Vienna, Paris and many other cities. He has just completed Japan, a book on his homeland and the country where he continues to be based.Source: Magnum Photos
Brandon Stanton
United States
1984
Brandon Stanton is an American author, photographer, and blogger. He is the author of Humans of New York, a photoblog and book. He was named to Time's "30 Under 30 People Changing The World" list. Since 2010, Stanton has taken hundreds of portraits of people living and working primarily in New York City, accompanied by bits of conversations about their lives. He has also traveled outside of the United States, capturing people and their lives in more than 20 countries, including Iran, Iraq, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Mexico. Stanton grew up in Marietta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, where he completed his schooling at The Walker School in 2002. He majored in history at the University of Georgia. In 2010, he bought a camera while working as a bond trader in Chicago, and started taking photographs in downtown Chicago on the weekends. When he lost his job a short time later, he decided to pursue photography full-time. Moving to New York City, he set out to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers and plot their portraits on a map of the city, surviving on unemployment checks to "almost pay rent" and borrowing money from friends and family. Eventually, he moved his photographs to the Humans of New York Facebook page, which he started in November 2010. After posting a photo of a woman including a quote from her, he soon began adding captions and quotes to his photographs, which eventually evolved into full interviews. His Humans of New York book was published in October 2013. It received positive reviews and sold 30,000 copies as preorders. The book reached the number 1 position on the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Sellers of 2013 for the week beginning November 3, 2013. The book remained on the list for 26 weeks, again reaching the number one position on December 21, 2014. In August 2014, Stanton traveled to the Middle East to photograph people as part of a 50-day trip through 10 countries in the region under the auspices of the United Nations. In July 2015 he traveled to Pakistan and again to Iran to do the same. At the conclusion of his trip to Pakistan, Stanton crowd funded $2.3 million to help end bonded labor in Pakistan. In January 2015, Stanton was invited to the Oval Office to interview President Barack Obama. The trip concluded a two-week crowdfunding campaign on Humans of New York in which $1.4 million was raised. In March 2016, Stanton opposed Donald Trump's presidential campaign, criticizing Trump on social media for hateful speech, such as delayed disavowing "white supremacy" and defending those who commit violence at his rallies. A day after his Facebook post, it had over 1.6 million likes and was shared nearly 1 million times. Stanton has posted stories and photos from the Pediatrics Department of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. As he did for his other projects, Stanton created a fundraising campaign, and raised over $3.8 million for pediatric cancer research.
Jacopo Maria Della Valle
I was born in Rome in 1979. When I was 6 years old I received my first camera and I fell in love with it at once. The camera has always been the means to get in touch with everything around me, savor it, store it and make it mine. As a child my dream was to become a director, I studied scenography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and I worked as a Digital Artist at Cinecittà, but it's through photography that I found the best way to express myself. I'm not a great lover of technique and rules, for me it's fundamental to train the eye and the heart (as Cartier-Bresson quoted) to capture moments, looks and gestures that contain stories, experiences, sensations and can communicate some emotion. The real keystone was when I put together my two great passions: photography and traveling. Traveling with the aim to photograph and photographing with the aim to travel, made me snap like a spring, every trip became an outlet to get out of the monotony of everyday life and makes me feel alive. I started traveling around Europe, in the United States, Africa and Cuba. I traveled around Asia accompanied by Terzani's reading and I was fascinated by the different Asian cultures. My main interest is the knowledge and the discovery of the authenticity of different populations which still live in respect of their particular cultural traditions. I undertake long journeys to reach the populations that still survive globalization and I always try to get in close contact with local people and live their own customs and traditions. I use the camera to connect with the other and with my shot I try to represent who I am in front of, with all his cultural and emotional baggage. This is why I prefer to take portraits, to reproduce the essence of who I meet. I hope with my photos to convey the same emotions that these meetings arouse in me.
Peter Sekaer
Denmark
1901 | † 1950
Peter Sekaer was a Danish photographer and artist. Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Sekaer came to New York in 1918 to seek freedom and opportunity. By 1922 he had a reputation as a master sign painter and had his own successful business producing posters. Several years later he began to take classes at The Art Student's League. Sekaer soon became acquainted with Ben Shahn, who may have been the one to introduce him to photography and who later introduced him to Walker Evans. After 1933, he devoted himself exclusively to photography, studying with Berenice Abbott at the New School for Social Research, and assisting Walker Evans on the project of photographing the Museum of Modern Art's African sculpture collection. In 1936 Sekaer accompanied Evans, who was hired by the Resettlement Administration (RA, later to become the FSA) on a photographic journey throughout the South, often shooting the same subject. Like many of his contemporaries, Sekaer sought to capture the real world with photographs that combined artistic expression with a personal commitment to social change. From 1936 to 1942 Sekaer became a professional photographer and was hired by the federal government agency, the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), and later became the head of the REA's graphic department. In 1938 the REA sent Sekaer to the United States Housing Authority (USHA). The photographs Sekaer made for the USHA, an agency primarily concerned with the removal of city slums and sponsorship of public urban housing, reveal his continued interest in the richness of human experience and environment. Transferred again in 1940 Sekaer photographed Navajo and Pueblo Indians for the Office of Indian Affairs. That same year, he worked as photographic researcher and still photographer for the REA film Power and the Land. After 1942 he continued working for other federal agencies photographing briefly for the Office of War Information (OWI), and the American Red Cross-agencies whose agendas conflicted with his own, and limited his freedom in artistic expression. Continually frustrated by this, Sekaer left Washington, DC for New York where he freelanced for several years, doing fashion and editorial assignments until he died of a heart attack at the age of 49 in 1950. Although Sekaer's photographs were widely published and exhibited during his lifetime, his work largely became forgotten after his death until an exhibition held in 1980 at the Witkin Gallery in New York and later in 1990 at the Royal Library in Copenhagen for which a catalog was published. Many of Sekaer's photographic prints can be seen in the public collection of the Royal Library in Copenhagen. The High Museum of Art in Atlanta acquired a trove of more than seventy rare vintage prints by Sekaer, the largest holding of its kind in any American art museum. Many of these works have never been on public view. From June 2010 until January 2011, the museum staged an exhibition of Sekaer's work titled Signs of Life.Source: Wikipedia
Abhishek Basak
Abhishek Basak is a professional freelance photographer specializing in travel, people, and documentary photography. Based in India, he has been dedicated to capturing compelling images and sharing the art of photography for over seven years. His journey in this field has been one of continuous exploration, boundless learning, and an unwavering passion for storytelling through the lens. He has served as a photography teacher at a distinguished school in Kolkata and continues to mentor aspiring photographers in various aspects, including post-processing. He is also a co-mentor for AH Photography Expedition, where he organizes photography tours and workshops to inspire and guide budding talent. He has achieved prestigious distinctions such as EFIP (Excellence FIP) and EFIAP (Excellence FIAP). He has mentored two National Geographic photographers from Poland. He has judged many national and international photography competitions. His photographs have been exhibited in more than 130 countries worldwide. He has been honoured with the Best Photographer Award over 70 times in international competitions held in countries like France, Luxembourg, Serbia, Bulgaria, Belgium, Ukraine, South Africa, Slovenia, Italy, and more. In India, he has received this distinction over 100 times in national competitions, amassing a total of more than 3000 awards across national and international contests. Awards and Honors: · HIPA Finalist in both 2018 and 2023. · First Indian to win the One Eyeland Photography Award 2024. · Winner in 35 Awards 2022. · Winner in Agora Photography Competition. · Winner in Black & White Photo Award. · Winner in World Photography Club Competition. · Winner in FIP Monthly Photography Competition. · Winner in India Photography Summit 2024. · Winner in Photography Club of Assam photo contest. · Winner in NAP Photo contest, Dhanbad Camera Club. · First Indian to win an award from Taichung Photo Award. · Honourable Mention at the KAFF International Contest. · Finalist in the prestigious SIENA International Photo Awards. · Finalist in Urban Photo Awards & Vanguard Photo contest, and many more. · In 2022, he earned 2nd place nationally in the EISA International Photography Competition, a distinguished honour in the field of photography. Publications: · His photographs have been featured in globally acclaimed publications and platforms, including National Geographic, Getty Reportage, The Bangla Live, Chiiz, Asian Photography Magazine, Smart Photography Magazine, Travellers’ World, Viewfinder, The Guardian, and Uttarbanga Sangbad. His work has also been published in major Indian media outlets, including Anandabazar, Eisamay, Bartaman, Anandabahar, Uttarbanga Sangbad, and Outlook Traveller, among others. Kulasai Dussehra: Kulasai Dussehra, celebrated in Kulasekarapattinam, Tamil Nadu, is one of South India's most unique and vibrant festivals. Unlike the traditional Dussehra festivities across India, which often center on Lord Rama's victory over Ravana, Kulasai Dussehra is marked by grand processions and intense devotion to Goddess Mutharamman, who is believed to be an incarnation of Durga. Thousands of devotees dress in various forms of gods, goddesses, and mythical figures, bringing alive the region's deep-rooted cultural and religious traditions.This festival showcases one of the diverse ways Dussehra is celebrated. It represents the triumph of good over evil while highlighting local traditions, beliefs, and artistic expressions. My photos of this event, taken in a 24-hour cycle covering start to finish, capture the fervour, colours, and deep spirituality of the festival, making it a cultural experience that deserves wider recognition and appreciation. Understanding Kulasai Dussehra broadens our view of India's rich heritage.
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