Photojournalist Harmit Singh covered the 1971 war that splintered Pakistan and created Bangladesh. Singh’s images bear the contradictions of being “embedded” with the Indian army: the absence of guerrilla fighters in their own war, the cumulative display of military hardware, the abject confusion of prisoners of war, and the instrumentalized deployment of refugee images. Looking at the distance between the photographed and the published, we wonder if there is a fugitivity theory at play–where war photography has to constantly elude the oversight, intervention, and instructions of newsroom editors.
Naeem Mohaiemen combines films, installations, and essays to research socialist utopia, malleable borders, and decaying family units—beginning with Bangladesh’s two postcolonial markers (1947, 1971) and then radiating outward to transnational alliances. He is author of Prisoners of Shothik Itihash (Kunsthalle Basel, 2014) and co-editor w/ Eszter Szakacs of Solidarity Must be Defended (Tranzit, forthcoming).
Anjali Singh is a literary agent in New York City. She is best known for having championed Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis after stumbling across it on a visit to Paris. Among the authors whose careers she has helped launch are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Samantha Hunt, Saleem Haddad and Bridgett Davis.