Mentors: Peter DiCampo, Shehab Uddin & Amanda Stuart 

The efficiency of foreign aid is one of the more contentious issues of our time, but consistent journalistic investigation and the voices of the would-be beneficiaries are often missing from this debate. What Went Wrong? is an effort to reframe the conversation on foreign aid through in-depth photojournalism, crowdsourced reports, and data visualization. In this workshop we will identify aid and development projects in Kathmandu local people are passionate about; report on their progress, successes, failures, and alternatives; and consider creative ways of telling these stories visually.  

Mentors: Rosangela Rennó, Kelly Hussey-Smith & Shikhar Bhattarai 

When family photos enter the archive they are often read and framed in ways that differ significantly from their original site – the family photo ‘album’. Family photos can offer unique approaches to the ideas and stories that nourish the feminist movement in Nepal—as has recently been demonstrated by the Nepal Picture Library’s Feminist Memory Project. This workshop is a collaboration with the Nepal Picture Library, “a digital photo archive run by photo.circle that strives to create a broad and inclusive visual archive of Nepali social and cultural history.” The workshop will explore how photos and other materials from archives can be re-contextualised and updated to explore contemporary issues (or agendas). Texts from newspapers, personal testimonies, new photographs made in the workshop, and photographs from family albums and other documentations from the Nepal Picture Library, will be the source for exploring how photographic archives can be expanded through different techniques, formats, and outputs. This workshop will explore how we can activate new readings of family photographs in the archive, through dialogue with archivists, families and others.

Mentors: Laia Abril, Seth Ellis & Bunu Dhungana 

The conceptual umbrella of the workshop is to observe the evolution of different family structures, interpersonal relationships, bonding traditions and gender issues in Nepali society. The intended outcome will be an installation exhibition using different platforms that can range from photography, video, audio, as well as interactive or artistic elements. We will enter this project through personal stories with a conscious awareness of what are we going to gather from our interactions and what new documents we seek to develop. We will pay close attention to people’s own representation of these aspects in Nepalese society, both in private and public spheres, taking into account for possible misrepresentations that occurred in the past. Through collaboration, and acknowledging participants own priorities when it comes to being represented, the door is open to having people participate in the construction to these new evidences. 

Mentors: Nuning Juliastuti, Alan Hill & Sagar Chettri 

Migrant labour is one of the means to finding a better life for oneself and for one’s family. Many Nepalis regard the option of becoming a migrant-labourer as the best way to improve their lot. The life of a migrant labourer is threatened by patterned abuse, scam, human trafficking, and exploitation. But to work abroad seems to be the only option, particularly because the unemployment rate in Nepal is high. Successful migrant workers demonstrate visible wealth, which changes the outward appearances of their villages.  

In this workshop we will move in and out of the dominant narrative of the Nepali migrant workers produced by the state, local or international mass media, and international NGOs on human right and labour. We will consider other stories of the migrant workers that are often left unnoticed–migrant workers’ songs, public photo archives, leaked photo diaries, found online video testimonies, and other traces of migration. The workshop aims to transform these materials into visual-driven archives. How can we make archives as a site to engage and learn about the politics of record making? We will learn about who is usually in charge of deciding what to record and authorizing certain archives. This project proposes to think about archives as the field of knowledge production. Everyday we are simultaneously surrounded with the uniformed way of mass media reports about migrant workers—vulnerable and weak. Can we use archives-making as a possible site to show their other capacities and respect their knowledge at the same time?