Professor of Photography Priya Kambli has continued to collect recognition and honors as she comes off her sabbatical year:

The Grunwald Gallery of Art at Indiana University Bloomington will host a lecture by Priya Kambli on Thursday, November 2nd, from 5:30 to 6:30 pm.  The lecture is in conjunction with the exhibition Kinship, curated by IU’s Assistant Professor of Photography Elizabeth M. Claffey and Gallery Director Betsy Stirratt.

Kinship examines the influence of family life on personal and cultural identity. Each artist delves into the complex nature of family structures to express how it shapes internal dialogue and personal narrative.

Professor Kambli presented work from new series, “Shubh Mangal Savdhan” made during her sabbatical year at Society for Photographic Education’ s regional conference, Developing Spaces/Places, in East Peoria , IL, from October 12th to October 15, 2017.

She writes, about her new series:

In the body of work “Shubh Mangal Savdhan” (a mantra that announces and cautions at the same time, the arrival of the auspicious wedding moment), I am re-contextualizing photographs from two different wedding albums -my parents’ and my maternal uncle’s – by obscuring and revealing information. The act of mining an archive of images has been central to my work throughout my career, focusing on the collection of family photographs brought with me to the United States when emigrating here at age 18 and other family photographs that I have recently inherited. The occlusion of the photograph is done using flour- the alterations I make to these photographs, the use of pattern in and on top of the object, have been described as a form of fenestration. Though they obscure the image, they create windows through which underlying structures are revealed.

The works in this series engage with the boundary between the pictorial space and the viewer’s space – both reinforcing it and suggesting its permeability. The application of flour to archival photographs and the creation of openings or peepholes in that layer of flour refers to the distinct temporal and geographic spaces occupied by the original photographer behind the lens, the subjects of those photographs in front of it, and my own position as viewer and collaborator on the far side of a divide spanning decades and hemispheres.

In addition, Professor Kambli was shortlisted for a women in photography grant along with six additional women whose work truly deserved recognition.  The grant received over 1200 entries from over 100 countries. Each will be featured on Women in Photography (WIPNYC) with a month long solo show in the upcoming year.

The artists shortlisted were:

Adél Koleszár
Born in Hungary. Currently residing in Mexico
Cristina Velásquez
Born in Colombia. Currently residing in New York, NY
Lisa Lindvay
Born in Erie, PA. Currently residing in Chicago, IL
Nydia Blas
Born in Ithaca, NY.  Currently residing in Ithaca, NY
Priya Kambli
Born in India. Currently residing in Kirksville, Missouri
Sonja Hamad
Born in Damascus, Syria. Currently residing in Germany

Congratulations Priya!  This is all wonderful news!