2016 NEEL DONGRE GRANTS FOR EXCELLENCE IN PHOTOGRAPHY
WORLD OF RECYCLE
Long before recycling became an environmental buzzword it was part of our DNA, something we practised on an everyday basis. The concept of throwing away was an alien one - there was always someone, somewhere, who could find a use for discarded objects, whether they were given away as donations or sold for further process and sale. What we now know as 'recycling' was not so much an environmental choice as it was part of a much larger economic churn, and very often, an economic necessity.
A lot of this is expressed in this body of work by ten young photographers.We see the world of recycling from different perspectives, from the organised industry at Burari to bleak open landfills of muck and filth where ragpickers work even as scores of predatory birds circle overhead. From Mayapuri, India's largest metal junk trade yard, emerge colour diptychs of corpses of dismembered cars, and rusted skeletons of car doors hanging on walls. Images of machine parts translate into an art form in crisp black-and-white. One image looks as if a worker is wrestling with a vehicle ripe for the plucking: a marginalised object for a marginalised buyer.
2016 NEEL DONGRE GRANT AWARDEES
Cheena Kapoor
Rahul Sharma
Swarat Ghosh
Manu Yadav
Shweta Pandey
Monica Tiwari
Siddarth Behl
Sreedeep
Saumya Khandelwal