Pondichery: Une Ville, Un Lieu, Une Personne

Pondichery: Une Ville, Un Lieu, Une Personne

An exhibition of photographs and poems by

Pascal Bernard & Anupama Raju

                           20 July – 4 August, 2012

                      (Inauguration 20 July, 6.30pm)

@Art Gallery, Alliance Française de Trivandrum

Adoor Gopalakrishnan will inaugurate ‘Une Ville, Un Lieu, Une Personne’ an exhibition  of  photographs  and  poetry  at  Alliance  Française  de  Trivandrum, Forest Office Lane, Vazhuthacaud on Friday, 20 July at 6.30 pm.

An Indo-French project, ‘Une Ville, Un Lieu, Une Personne’ (One City, One Place, One Person) explores Pondicherry through the photography of Pascal Bernard,  a  photographer  from  La  Rochelle,  France  and  the  poetry  of Anupama Raju, a writer based in Thiruvananthapuram, India.

‘Une  Ville,  Un  Lieu,  Une  Personne’  is  based  on  the  belief  that  people  and places are what make a city and shape its character. Therefore, the project explores  Pondicherry  through  Pascal  Bernard’s  photographs  that  feature  a cross-section of the town’s residents and poems inspired by the photographs.

The project uses ‘tryptiques’ — sets of three photographs — that tell a small story  of  different  people  and  their  favourite  places  in  Pondicherry.  Each tryptique has a picture of the person, a picture of the person in the place of his/her choice and a shot of the actual place.

Every tryptique is accompanied by a poem by Anupama Raju. The poems are in English and translated into French, and also feature a word/phrase in Tamil since  the  idea  was  to  use  all  the  three  languages  of  Pondicherry:  French, English and Tamil. Though inspired by the photographs, the poems are not specifically  about  the  people  photographed.  Anchored  strongly  in  poetic imagination,  the  poems  are  about  human  experiences  and  universal

emotions.