Moving Images

Can a woman get on a bus without worrying about being harassed? Can she travel alone late at night? What kind of women accesses public transport and how?

Written by Georgina Maddox
July 21, 2010 01:52 AM IST

3 min read

Can a woman get on a bus without worrying about being harassed? Can she travel alone late at night? What kind of women accesses public transport and how? These are issues faced by women on a daily basis while navigating a big bad city like Delhi. However,these are often swept under the carpet,which is why a group of concerned citizens is revisiting them. Photographer Gauri Gill is collaborating with Delhi-based NGO Jagori for a photography exhibition and is inviting entries on women and transport across the board.

The exhibition,titled Transportraits,is slotted for the third International Conference on Womens Safety in November but the project has begun now. The participants are invited to share photographs,even those taken with a cellphone camera. While photographers like Ram Rahman will be taking pictures,including constructed photographs,for the exhibition,there is value to experiential workphotographs that show the everyday reality of what people are going through all over the country, says Gill. The exhibition might also have sketches,cartoons and posters on display.

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The project invites works from both men and women. There may be cases where women are victims of sexual harassment,however the exhibition hopes to include the voices of the more vulnerable sections of society like young girls,elderly women,disabled women and transsexual women, says Kalpana Vishwanath,senior adviser at Jagori. Weve been doing projects on a safer city since 2004; public transport is a space where women have found themselves the most vulnerable. It is not something that one can avoid. We felt that using a creative medium to explore what women actually face while using public transport would put it back in the public domain, says Vishwanath.

The plan is to mount the exhibition like a travelling show and host it in spaces like Dilli Haat,or a park since it is important for the city to engage with this issue, she adds. We are also thinking of showing work in DTC buses. Jagori is in the process of getting permission and I really hope that will happen. I think it will engage viewers in a different way, adds Gill.

This exhibition is an extension of Gills ongoing engagement with gender and photography; her recent exhibition Notes from the Desert at Nature Morte was a series of powerful portraits of migrant rural communities in western Rajasthan. She is quite excited by the kind of entries that have been coming in,A young man from Jamia Nagar has sent in quite a telling comment on Ladies Special compartments in trains,one that might apply to all kinds of reservations in India,including those for women sarpanch,that often gets hijacked by men. To me it also works because it is humorous at one level, she muses.

Last date for entries is October 1. For more information call 26691219.