Las Meninas, or The Maids of Honour, by Velasquez is a painterly classic that reinstituted visual culture for 17th century Europe, and has grown in symbolic strength with every passing century. Today we will reinvent it as a metaphor for the new networked world of imagery in the 21st century. A networked world driven mostly by the power of the photographic medium delivered through computations on Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr and so on.

Power is what defined Las Meninas, or rather the source of it. Held up by the mechanism of visual perspective, in a world wracked by the democratisation of the visual, we hope to believe that that very power is lost, at least mitigated. But when we look deeper into the imagery surrounding our everyday lives, we see the same power at work—through perspective, angle, lights, focus, cropping; but also context, and then text as well. It is therefore exhilarating when we have an exhibition that consciously takes into account the various ways in which political, economic and social power direct our lives while bringing us fresh, new perspectives. Photo Kathmandu, with its 12 print exhibitions, seven slide-show nights, 14 artist talks and panel discussions, six workshops and a mixed-media residency bring us exactly that through a multiplicity of points of view with its 52 photographers and a range of international curators, editors and art practitioners from 22 different countries.

As I sit facing the young and very capable guest curator, Tanvi Mishra, I give in to the urge to disentangle the photographic image from some of the myths and expectations that surround it. I ask her to lay people’s questions and try and navigate. For example, why do we see so many foreign photographers at the show this time? “Because, firstly,” she says, “We are trying to expand beyond the Nepal-centric approach we had last year at Photo Kathmandu 2015. That was a remarkable year that tested each and every citizen of Nepal in so many ways. This year we felt we could afford to move beyond the immediate and try and discover things that affect our understanding and lives from a broader perspective.” But Nepal remains a central theme, as in Broken Rules by Arantxa Cedillo that records pioneering Nepali women, women who have broken societal rules in one way or the other. The project starts us off on a thread of introspection, even confrontation that easily weaves itself into other series like Azadeh Akhlaghi’s By An Eye Witness or Shikhar Bhattarai’s The Other Side of Annapurna. Inundated as we are by images every day (an estimated 1 trillion images were taken in 2014 alone), all of us suffer from a certain amount of image fatigue and it is  only a well curated body of work that succeeds in focusing our attention and make things real. Making things real is a difficult task, and Mishra feels the one way to do it is to stay away from exoticisations—both of class and culture.

The Other Side of Annapurna, for example records the photographer’s effort to understand “the people of Marpha and their relationship with the land. It is a reflection on the silence and rhythm of life on the other side of the Annapurna range.” Sandra Calligaro’s recording of everyday lives of normal, middle-class people from Kabul stems from a similar commitment. As we go through the exhibits, it becomes obvious that Tanvi Mishra is working on a strong agenda of breaking away from the stereotypical. For example, Afghan Dreams turns the idea of the visiting, foreign photographer looking for sensational footage on its head and reveals itself as a quiet documentation of “the development of Afghan society, shaken up by thirteen years of international

presence. These images show daily life, and present Afghans, Kabulis specifically, in the most ordinary way possible ... (in) contrast to the majority of images spread by the media, which remain focused on the spectacle of conflict.” On a similar vein, Dalit: A Quest for Dignity brings together 65 years of photographic documentation of the hereditarily underprivileged in Nepal. But it does so in a self-reflexive way that not only critiques the system that engenders such exploitation but also the traditional way of documenting it. Going back to Las Meninas, Dalit: A Quest for Dignity draws our attention to the mirror on the back wall, which reflects the power source that controls the system.

Tanvi has moved the content beyond the borders of Nepal and expanded the scope of Photo Kathmandu to include the whole of South Asia, including Iran beside the eight SAARC nations and hopes the undercurrent of cultural and experiential similarities will resonate with the viewers here. The venue and the nature of the audience are very important, she feels. Herself a core team member of the Delhi Photo Festival Secretariat, she understands how specific venues attract specific kinds of visitors and is thrilled with the fact that unlike most other festivals, Photo Kathmandu is geared towards attracting and informing all members of the local community instead of restricting itself to an elite viewership. Most of the venues are community spaces in Patan. This also strengthens their educational initiative.

When asked “Why photography?”, Tanvi is quick to answer that the taking and making of images has become so ubiquitous and so democratised that it has become “the” chosen medium for the future. Also, visual literacy is something that can be easily taught and learnt, far easier than alphabets (we may remember that our brain can supposedly process images 60,000 times faster than it can process written/printed words). For example, when commenting on the series Saudi Tales of Love by Tasneem Al-Sultan that documents the lives of women of Saudi Arabia, she says, “if this changes the perceptions of even one single woman or a man here; open a window to the struggles that Saudi women go through themselves, it will be more than enough satisfaction for me!”

On a different note, when asked about the future of the photographic image, Tanvi confidently shared that it was through collaboration with other media that the photographic image will be evolving. As an editor with PIX, she herself facilitates the cross-pollination between text and images. Photo Kathmandu too has such instances, like Iran’s Azadeh Akhlagi’s By An Eyewitness that works at the cross section of photography, history and scenic design.

With Measures of Loss and Memory of War, Tanvi has brought us images from the insurgencies in Sri Lanka, India and Nepal. She feels the similarities in the victims that civil wars claim, and the universal nature of the suffering caused, will activate empathy and dormant connections in viewers here. Images of conflict, war and suffering are all around us, everyday. It is a daily battle we wage against such images to remain sane and unaffected ourselves. And so we are fast developing immunity to the power of such images. But with such immunity we lose the power to empathise and feel as humans. And so we must be very careful to not give in to image fatigue, but remain open and receptive. Otherwise there won’t be many of us left to counteract the devious onslaughts brought on by politics and business.

One reason why I started this article with Velsquez’s painting was because it problematises perspective and visually queues us in on the network of power. And Photo Kathmandu insists in unraveling this at various levels—be it gender, class, caste, ethnicity, climate and the archive.

The other reason was because I wanted to draw attention to the hybrid quality that characterises the evolution of photography right now. The mind boggling number of images taken and shared by anyone with a cell phone and Internet connection on this planet (and that seems to be half the global population right now) almost makes it mandatory that photography must encounter and interact with other media to hold its own ground.