From the project Putting Ourselves in the Picture. Image credits: Precious, Autograph & Women for Refugee Women/Fast Forward

Photography, invented in the 1820s, has revolutionised, for better or for worse, how we record and remember things. Five billion photos are taken everyday and more than 14 billion images are shared daily on social media. Photography has become a spontaneous act and a universal language now. In this age of excess image production, the question that begs to be asked and answered not just by photographers and artists, but by anyone, is – why do we photograph?

The fourth edition of the Chennai Photo Biennale takes its primary inspiration from Dayanita Singh’s ongoing exploration “#whyphotograph” which unfolds a whole series of inquiries into our relationship with photography. Emphasising, first on the making of the work, and then, on the form and the presentation of it, Dayanita urges everyone to keep going back to this critical question of our time.

“What is the future of photography if photographers just make photographs?” – Dayanita Singh

Other questions like Who are we photographing for? What is happening to photography, its users, makers, and viewers? What kind of work do we want our pictures to do? How do we move from a photographer-subject relationship to co-authorship? – also emerge from the practices and texts of many of many artists and writers over the years, some who you will encounter below.

“The job of the artist is not to provide answers, but to build the work and their practice to ask the right question.” – Sunil Gupta

In this era of visual saturation, CPB4 brings together slower approaches to image making. The biennale will showcase diverse practices by artists who are reshaping dominant narratives by addressing gaps in representation, remixing colonial visual vocabularies with native avant garde aesthetics, by shifting the gaze from the lone photographer to forge an ethic of care and collective authorship.

To find out more please go to the direct link.