Parthiv Shah, from CMAC, was invited to join a delegation of prominent Indian photographers to visit Israel (from the 17th to the 22nd of December, 2017), under the auspices of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) to tour Jerusalem and take pictures of the city. The photographs were then showcased in the exhibition titled “Transcending Jerusalem: JLM through Indian Lenses”.
About The Exhibition
Parthiv’s point of inquiry for this project was to look at the Indian diaspora community in Israel. According to him, the contemporary diaspora are a generation of Indians whose principal link to ‘India’ are only the generations before them. Being born and brought up in Israel, the ‘generation of descendants’ share sensibilities that constantly negotiate between the ‘Indian-ness’ imparted to them by their ancestors as well as their belief in the western ethos. The Diaspora of descendants embodies the transition of ‘looking outward’ for dialogue and cohabitation. In the light of this I propose to photograph about 10 individuals whose personal narratives can throw light on the evolution of diasporic identity.
Parthiv wanted to photograph them in their environment and also place them in their favorite places in and around Jerusalem, skyline as a backdrop. He wanted to observe, photograph and interview these individuals in not only their professional environment but also their family surroundings to understand the complex issue of identity.
His intervention is project was called Transcending Jerusalem witnessed by Indian Diaspora.
“Like all compositions of community, bound by imagined commitments to a cultural identity, be it historical, economical or geographical, are embodiments of change, the diaspora is similarly a fragmented narrative that undergoes revisions through time. When one begins to chart the contours of cultural identity shared by over 25 million Indians living outside the country, one comes across the many layers of class, caste, gender, state, language and the list goes on and on. The palimpsest of past may tell much but we find no absolutes, only transition and the promises of same”
An introduction to the exhibition, written by Parthiv Shah