KATHMANDU, Aug 31: Nepal Picture Library is set to release its latest photobook, titled "The Public Life of Women: A Feminist Memory Project," on Friday.
The Public Life of Women, originally curated as an exhibition, showcases selections from this archive. Put together from contributions made by over 150 individuals and organizations, this photobook flashes instances from the past to present publicness itself as a key feminist strategy in Nepal, according to a statement issued by Nepal Picture Library.
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A first-of-its-kind publication, The Public Life of Women is also a testimony to the archival and artifactual orientation of feminism at large. Containing more than 500 images, accompanying exhibition texts in English and Nepali, as well as a conversation between curators Diwas Raja KC and Nayan Tara Gurung Kakshapati, this volume engages fundamental questions of public memory and feminist histories. The contents of this publication was first prepared as an exhibition titled The Public Life of Women.
Khagendra Sangroula, a distinguished writer and civil society activist, praised the project's significance, stating, "The distinct portrayal of women's pivotal role in Nepal's social and political movements, spanning from the Rana regime and the Panchayat era to the era of multiparty democracy and the Maoist insurgency, is remarkable."
One of the curators of the project and Head of Research and Archives at Nepal Picture Library Diwas Raja KC reflected on the value of archival photos for the project. He said that photographs are more than just documents of evidence and that they are also objects that constantly command us to interpret them metaphorically, aesthetically, and emotionally.
“I find it really invaluable that photographs allow us to say that those too are integral to the truths we seek from the past. As a photographic repository, then, [this project] proposes that we disrupt the beliefs we may have internalized as feminist truths and situate ourselves in a thicket of interpretations. Rather than staying with fixed narratives about the courses and directions of feminism, the archive encourages fresh connections, evaluations, and meanings to be drawn,” he said.
