For the forthcoming Special Issue on Pakistan, PIX would like to explore the evolving relationship between art-practice and documentary tropes as they are taking shape in Pakistan.
Pakistan’s place in South Asia is ‘strategic’, but in recent years there has been a rupture, change and expansion in its regional character, conditioned by changing regimes as well as a current generation that is exposed to transformations in communication technology and social media. Consequently, the future of practice-oriented forms like photography has also changed how and what one sees within its cultural sphere—through reportage and the artistic developments of known and unknown practitioners.
With a general emphasis on the notion of a surge—a sudden and powerful development in identity and location-specific imagery, the issue speculates a renewed understanding of the future of photo-practice within a country that has witnessed a swiftly evolving ‘state’, leading to a range of activity around personal expression and social awareness. With an eye to history, as well as to the contemporary, the issue invites an assortment of submissions in order to analyze the present surfeit of visuals, a rush of images informed by socio-political circumstances. At the same time, PIX seeks works that could reconstruct an understanding of image-based practices in Pakistan, striving to unhinge stereotypes often created through pictures in the public domain. An emphasis on personal space and gender relations as well as a consideration of private archives and a shifting gaze are also insinuated by the thematic, and these may be explored through portraiture, landscapes, advertising, fashion, street photography, photo-journalism and conceptual forms to mention a few prevalent approaches.
PIX therefore proposes some searching questions about practice and reception such as: what does photography tell us of visual tropes, the processes of nation-building, modernisation and cultural heritage as well as the local/global politics of representation? And how does this practice help in developing a sense of self?
NOTE:
The call for submissions is open to photographers from any nationality, though the work must be related to Pakistan as a geographical location. Special features may also include submissions from Pakistani photographers residing outside the country.
MANNER OF SUBMISSION:
A minimum of 12 and maximum of 25 images may be sent in the form of a coherent body of work.
Please send, via e-mail, low-res jpeg images within the range of 4 x 6 inches at 200 dpi. High resolution images will be requested if the body of work is selected.
Please DO NOT send links to a website (even your own).
Email to: pixels2011@gmail.com (for submissions and queries).
A Dropbox link to photos and introductory text is preferred. The photographer should send a few lines (50-100 words) introducing himself/herself and the images. The quarterly reserves the right to make the final selection but all photographers who make submissions will be responded to in due course. There is no fee provided for the images, however when published, the quarterly will be circulated widely. Contributors will receive 2 copies each. All images and works will be duly accredited.
PIX is a photography quarterly that seeks not only to present photography in temporal, spatial or historical terms, but also in personal, self-conscious and aesthetic ways. PIX also seeks to investigate and engage with broad and expansive fields of contemporary photographic practice in India and outside, ranging from the application, conceptual standing and adaptability of photography to its subjects: its movement, transmission, appropriation and distinct relation to the allied arts.