Lashkar
The Story of Secunderabad
Narendra Luther
2010
The book is about the city of Secunderabad. Hyderabad and Secunderabad have been called twin cities, but they have two different histories.
While Hyderabad was founded on love, the affair between Md. Quli Qutb Shah and Bhagmati, Secunderabad was an offspring of coercive diplomacy. Lashkar tells the fascinating story of how the cantonment city gradually grew into an English town: how a new fort, a high-security prison-house, an Anglo-Indian township called Little England and the famous sex market Lal Bazaar were built. This compelling yet lucid book of history, lavishly illustrated with the vintage photographs collected from the Kalakriti Archives, is a must-read for anyone interested in Secunderabad and, in extension, the history of Deccan.
Cosmology to Cartography
A Cultural Journey of Indian Maps :
Vivek Nanda and Alexander Johnson
2016
Published in accompaniment to the exhibition titled Cosmology to Cartography: A Cultural Journey of Indian Maps at the National Museum, the book discusses a large body of rare Indian maps, tracing the long changing history of terrestrial vision and imagination of the subcontinent from the medieval cosmological manuscripts and pre-survey maps to the modern scientific cartography of the colonial era. The book is lavishly illustrated with high-quality images and each of them is separately analysed with their social, cultural and political contexts in the accompanying text written by Vivek Nanda and Alex Johnson, the renowned historians and curators of the exhibition. Except for the two maps collected from the National Museum, all maps in the book are from the Prshant Lahoti Personal Collection at the Kalakriti Archives. The book is published by the Kalakriti Archives and National Museum in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, Government of India.
Kal Aaj Aur Kal
A Journey of Hyderabad
Past, Present and Future
Curated by Prshant Lahoti
2019
About 50 photographs and maps from the Kalakriti Archives appear in tandem with photos maps and plans of contemporary Hyderabad in this publication that gives us a tri-perspective of the city a recent glorious past, an ever-changing present and visions of the future. The book follows an exhibition we curated for the Agora Bienniale of Architecture, Urbanism & Design in September 2017 in Bordeaux, France.
A seamless thread of visual history weaves the narrative: beginning from maps and photos from the end of the 19th century. A `before and after’ section, where contemporary photographers step into the perspectives of older ones such as Lala Deen Dayal,is also spread across these pages. Kal Aaj Aur Kal is an attempt to encapsulate an evolution of visual time that the memories of our successive older generations bear testimony to.
Urban Frames, 16th KF2019
Visual Practices and Transitions
Curated by Abeer Gupta
Director of Krishnakriti Foundation
Urban Frames: Visual Practices and Transitions is the general theme of the 16th Edition of Krishnakriti Festival held in January 2019. The Festival consisting of exhibitions, film screening, seminars, showcased in the festival, revealing the Festival’s central concept of the city as an archive.
The Festival Catalogue is published not just to record the events that took place during the Festival but also to give a clear idea about the curatorial concept behind it, the methods and orientations of each individual project and the range of archival materials used. It helps the readers and, most importantly, the future participants to understand the broad and open critical frameworks within which this and every next edition of the Festival will be organised.
Retrospective
Retrospective 1955 -2013
Jogen Chowdhury
The book serves as a comprehensive literary and visual record of the exhibition: Jogen Chowdhury: Retrospective, held in the Kalakriti Art Gallery, Hyderabad, between February 16 and March 20, 2016.
Beginning from the atypical artist’s earlier work while still at art school in Calcutta in the 1950s we get glimpses of the journey of his form and perspective over the decades.
The artist’s intimate early works and art study present themselvesfrom the other end of the spectrum of his fully-formed ouvre, but a unity of intention in Jogen’s works is unmistakable. With a reprint of K.G. Subramanyan’s essay on the artist, other essays, an interview and Jogen’s own words, the book fulfills the function of preserving the energy and education that was shared during the exhibition in 2016.
A Perceptive Eye
Retrospective 1960 onwards
Surya Prakash
It would not have been anything short of formidable trying to put in one place the scope of the world of Hyderabad-based artist Surya Prakash, whose career spans nearly six decades, for a retrospective.The exhibition: Surya Prakash Retrospective, held in the Kalakriti Art Gallery between July 28 and August 27, 2017, has informed the contents of this book. But it is the long form essay accompanying pictures of Surya’s work that aids the reader for adeserving primer on the artist’s oeuvre.
We follow the artist’s journey through several layers of spectacular pigments and imaginations. His work surreal, impressionist, yet always resolute brings out the micro nuances of an intensely intimate perspective that is as breathtaking as it is educating of the unfurling of certain tendencies of Indian art through the decades.
This book is for anybody wanting to explore the multiple dimensions of Surya’s worldview. Needless to say, it is also a treat