Tate Photography: Sheba Chhachhi

Description

'I have always been drawn to 'odd' women. I feel an affinity, a resonance with women who don't fit the norm - perhaps recognising aspects of myself - and this is reflected in my photographic work.' Sheba Chhachhi is a photographer, women's rights activist, writer, filmmaker and an installation artist. Based in New Delhi, she has exhibited her works widely in India and internationally, transforming pressing contemporary issues into compelling, evocative works of art. The powerful photographs reproduced here are selected from three major series. Seven Lives and a Dream spans decades of engagement with, and participation in, the feminist movement. Ganga's Daughters reveals the lives of a group of women sadhus (religious renunciates): each woman in the series subverts conventional assumptions about gender, sexuality, domesticity and female piety. In the 1990s, Chhachhi was one of the first female photographers to document the conflict in Kashmir, resulting in 'When the Gun Is Raised, Dialogue Stops': Women's Voices from the Kashmir Valley. Interweaving the mythic and the social, her work, as she puts it, 'is really about opening up a conversation and trying to invite people to think about things ... social and public issues, primarily feminism and ecology.' The Tate Photography Series is a celebration of international photography in the Tate collection and an introduction to some of the greatest photographers at work today. With the direct involvement of living photographers in collaboration with photography curators, these books showcase the best and most notable images taken across the globe, from city streets to seashores, moving across landscapes and through subcultures, in a visual travelogue of our world. Each book contains a new conversation between curator and photographer and is prefaced with a short introduction. The theme for the first four titles is Community and Solidarity. Also available in this series are: Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen (978-1-84976-800-9) Sabelo Mlangeni (978-1-84976-802-3) Liz Johnson Artur (978-1-84976-801-6)

Beatriz Cifuentes Feliciano is Assistant Curator, International Art, at Tate.