[Nepal has been lurching
from crisis to crisis for years. Its last Parliament, known as the Constituent
Assembly, was elected in 2008, but its mandate expired last year after it
failed to write a constitution. The government has been led by Baburam Bhattarai of the Unified
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) since August 2011, but without a Parliament
various civil functions have been gradually shutting down.]
.jpg)
Chief Justice Khil Raj
Regmi of Nepal’s Supreme Court was sworn in by President Ram Baran Yadav at
around 9 a.m., according to Mr. Yadav’s spokesman. A home minister and law
minister were sworn in at the same time.
“People are very
optimistic today all over the country that at least now this government will be
able to hold elections and the country will move forward,” said the spokesman,
Rajendra Dahal.
An agreement among the
country’s four largest political parties was signed late Wednesday night after
months of bickering. But the agreement was opposed by many smaller parties as
well as some legal groups, and there were widespread protests.
Nepal has been lurching
from crisis to crisis for years. Its last Parliament, known as the Constituent
Assembly, was elected in 2008, but its mandate expired last year after it
failed to write a constitution. The government has been led by Baburam Bhattarai of the Unified
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) since August 2011, but without a Parliament
various civil functions have been gradually shutting down.
Rival parties did not
want Mr. Bhattarai leading the government during the elections, but Mr.
Bhattarai refused to surrender his post without a broad agreement on how the
elections would be supervised.
Mr. Regmi had balked at
an earlier agreement that would have required him to resign from the Supreme
Court. Under the present agreement, his post on the court will be held by an
interim chief justice. He will return to the court after elections are held. A
vote is expected in the next three months.
Other issues that
delayed an agreement among the parties involved an insistence by the Maoists of
positions in the Nepalese Army and their demand for an amnesty on crimes
committed during the civil war. The Maoists won some concessions for a top
military post but were unable to win an agreement for general amnesty.
Mr. Regmi holds the
title of chairman of the council of ministers. Under the agreement, he will be
allowed to lead the government until November, if holding elections takes that
long.
Prateek Pradhan contributed reporting from
Katmandu, Nepal.
MUMBAI’S‘FOCUS’ FESTIVAL SHOWCASES WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHERS
[The exhibition also reflects a range of international photographic
practices. “It is important to understand the varied practice of women
photographers all over the world,” said Elise Foster Vander Elst, co-founder of
the Focus festival and founder of Asia Art Projects. “They are all quite
feminist works in that they are all very bold and have something to say.”]
MUMBAI—
A family picture set against an idyllic countryside with the figure of the
father cut out, replaced by a studio backdrop. A panoramic view of a city in
flux, taken at different times of the day. An ethereal image of a translucent
plastic bag caught on a tree, fluttering in the wind. A family portrait
dominated by the figure of a woman standing straight and tall, front and
center.
At a time when much attention is being paid to women’s rights in India, the Focus photography festival in Mumbai is
putting the female perspective on full display in a show titled “A Photograph
is Not an Opinion.” Curated by the photographer Sunil Gupta with the art writer
Veeranganakumari Solanki, the show features emerging and established contemporary
female photographers from around the world, like Gauri Gill, Mohini Chandra,
Chino Otsuka and Emily Andersen.
“Gathering images only taken by women photographers is a political act
in the sense that it forces the general audience, men and women, to look at
things from a women’s viewpoint and rethink the usual aesthetic,” said Matthieu
Foss, co-founder of the Focus festival, which began Wednesday and runs through
March 27. “Many of the works deal with free speech, emancipation and saying,
‘Enough is enough.’ ”
He said he would like visitors to the show to walk away with “the fact
that you can find ways of expressing anger and discontent through ways other
than violence.”
The exhibition also reflects a range of international photographic
practices. “It is important to understand the varied practice of women
photographers all over the world,” said Elise Foster Vander Elst, co-founder of
the Focus festival and founder of Asia Art Projects. “They are all quite
feminist works in that they are all very bold and have something to say.”
While the show is diverse in its context and approach, some of the
underlying themes running through the images are gender, urbanism, identity,
the family and loss.
One of the most remarkable works in the show is Ms. Chandra’s work
that looks at her family’s migration through family portraits in which the
image of her father is cut out, with studio backdrops taking the place of the
missing father. In a very different context, Kaucyila Brooke documents lesbian
bars in San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Closer to home, Saadiya Kochar deals with loss in the conflict in
Kashmir, and Ms. Gill examines the impact of the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms in New
Delhi.
“There is a kind of silence around what happened in Delhi in 1984,”
she said. “I wanted my photographs to trigger a conversation about what
happened in the city and what it means to all of us.”
This multiplicity of viewpoints is important to the exhibition, which
borrows its title from Susan Sontag’s essay “A Photograph Is Not an Opinion. Or
Is It?” from the book “Women.”
“The book implies that while men are under pressure to produce one
strong opinion, the strength of the women’s point of view it accommodates many
viewpoints,” said Mr. Gupta, the show’s co-curator. What I am trying to say in
the title is that there are variations of the truth being presented in this
exhibition.”
Mr. Gupta, who often teaches at the National Institute of Design,
lamented the lack of support for noncommercial photography in India, which
makes it difficult for women to “step out of the social norms and pick up a
camera and then fight for the space in which to develop their thinking.”
Yet it is often women who have collected and organized much of the
history of photography in South Asia, Mr Gupta said.
“The family album is often guarded and looked after by the women, who
are the repository of a family history,” said Mr. Gupta. “Similarly in India, I
think a lot of women have worked in the industry end of photography, doing the
research, maintaining archives and facilitating dialogues. The handful of
photo-specific agencies and galleries that we know of in India were started by
women.”
“A Photograph is Not an Opinion” is on until March 27 at
the Terrace Gallery in Mumbai’s Jehangir Art Gallery located at 161 Kalaghoda.
