This photography workshop dives into informal archives in the form of family albums to explore storytelling and bring intention into photo-making
Bombay, 2023 by Zahra Amiruddin
Photographer, writer and educationist Zahra Amiruddin has been documenting her family home in Byculla that her grandfather built, since 2013, albeit without a project in mind, through the pandemic and even after she moved out recently. The result is an archive that looks at how the space has changed over the years. The soon-to-be-aunt will also witness her old room embrace a new resident. When we think of an archive, we think of a library, with items labelled, categorised and neatly stored away.
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Zahra Amiruddin
But family photo albums, heirlooms, knick-knacks collected over the years and passed down, and other such items that evoke memories of another time are perfect first-hand accounts and documentations that pass on information. “We need to realise how these images become an archive and value them,” she tells us over a phone call. Diving into the impact of informal archives, Amiruddin will host Beneath the Photograph: A Visual Storytelling Workshop at JOJO Library and Bookshop at Shivaji Park in Dadar, as part of Sundays with JOJO.
Using a curated set of photobooks surrounding the theme of family homes and archives from the library’s collection of over 500 books from South Asia and across the world, the participants will read and discuss the books as well as their own archival photographs that they will carry along. They will then head out into the Dadar neighbourhood to create stories and narratives as they shoot on their phones.
A previous session with photographer Rohit Saha
“We use our own family photos as a starting point and look at them as more than just a photograph. In a digital world, we don’t realise that the images we make today, become a part of our family history and archive years down the line,” Amiruddin continues, “So, the idea is to look at these photographs and the ones that we keep making more preciously, as pieces of history that share moments that existed — familiarities with appearances, locations, homes and stories.”
Today, photography is accessible to everyone as compared to the era of film when photo-making was limited to the roll in your camera. In the digital age and in the time of social media, one-time view pictures and 24-hour stories, Amiruddin notes a shift in the intentionality of photo-making. She adds that in this temporary use of pictures, we tend to forget that photography is permanent. The workshop brings back consciousness to the process. “The moment you bring thought into photography, it changes the image,”she concludes.
On: January 28; 11 am to 1 pm
At: JOJO Library and Bookshop, Kanji Bhuvan, Shivaji Park, Dadar.
Log on to: @zahra.amiruddin
Cost: Rs 1,500 (inclusive of a coffee)
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