The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts in association with Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan will be presenting the exhibition, Calcutta: Chitpur Road Neighborhoods, featuring 21 photographers who were conducted by Peter Bialobrzeski. The exhibition in Delhi has been designed by Tanvi Mishra.
Introduction: In nineteenth-century Calcutta, a financially strong Indian elite emerged under the rule of the British East India Company. They built eclectic and grand mansions, blending traditional Mughal architecture with more classical, victorian elements. Today, these erstwhile magnificent villas and palaces retain only a shred of their former splendour, and it seems only a matter of time before these fragile edifices - traces of an established Bengali upper middle class - may disappear for ever. Under the guidance of Peter Biaolobrzeski, twenty-one photography students from the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen captured the crumbling yet enduring grandeur of this culturally rich heritage as part of the Kolkata Heritage Photo Project. The photographs on view are manual, colour pigment prints made in Germany.
An associated publication will be available by the same title re-published by Hatje Cantz in 2015.
Participating Artists: Claudia Aguilar, Johanna Ahlert, Björn Behrens, Jörg Brüggemann, Tine Casper, Franziska von den Driesch, Anja Engelke, Tobias Gratz, Christian Güssow, Dörte Haupt, André Hemstedt, Manja Herrmann, Torben Höke, Britta Isenrath, Joanna Kosowska, Jørgen Kube, Pia Pollmanns, Silke Schmidt, Inga Seevers, Marion Üdema and Sandy Volz.