Last year, I was invited by my friend and photographer,  Anil,  to be featured in a photo book,  A Month, 6 Artists and a Book that he was putting together for the Solo Photo Book Project that he’d signed up for.  I not only got to experience a photo shoot but also saw him work at making his first book and I must confess I was tempted to make one of my own.   After a year of taking photographs almost everyday,  I felt more prepared and jumped at the chance when it came around to sign up.

You can see the fruit of my labour – East or West, Bengal is the best! – here.   It is based on photographs taken over a 3 week period.   A few have been taken when accompanying Anil on his photo shoots.  You can see his book, A Slice of Life, here.

I had more or less decided to skip participating this year because of an unexpected opportunity of having solo art exhibition which kept me extremely busy.  For the four days of early morning (6am!!) shoots,  I mostly took video of the mad rush of frenetic activity in the fish market, Karwan Bazaar and the boats dredging and carrying sand on the Buri Ganga and at an abandoned stretch of railway track.  I was hoping to use still from the video as references for future work.  After the Solo finished I suddenly had a lot of time on hand and decided to give it a go.  On two of the days I ran out of tape and pulled out my still camera to take a few pics.  I’ve used some of these in the book.

The one taken above of the sleeping vendor is one of my faves followed closely by the one of the men peering through the bars on the truck they were travelling in.  The one below is of a vegetable vendor who came up to me and demanded to be photographed and then proceeded to perform some form of martial arts.  Obviously a Kungfu movie buff.  Didn’t want to give up on his cigarette even for that brief performance!   Here’s the shortlist of 83 photographs from about a 1000.  The book has a smaller sub set from these.

In case you’re still reading and want to know more about the project, I’ve cut and pasted some info from the website.  Click on the links below to read about it in more detail and maybe join in next year?

What is SoFoBoMo

SoFoBoMo is short for Solo Photo Book Month – a group event where a bunch of photographers all make solo photo books start to finish, in 31 days, at more or less the same time. It’s modeled loosely on NaNoWriMo, where participating writers all write novels in a month, and NaSoAlMo, where musicians write and record solo albums in a month.

For SoFoBoMo, the goal is to make the photos, write any needed text, layout the book, and produce a PDF image of the book, all in 31 days. Rather than confining it to a single calendar month, we use a ‘fuzzy month’, where you can pick any contiguous 31 day period inside a two month window – this makes it a bit more flexible and encourages broader participation.

My first Solo exhibition ended earlier tonight.  This whole week has been exhilirating.    The Opening on the 29th was very well received.  I was touched by the speech made by Radha Chakravarty, Shahid Kabir, Baby Maudud and my husband (on my behalf).  Each in their own way went a long way in making the event special and one that I will never forget.  Inspite of being averse to public speaking I managed to get up and string a few words together.  Gallery Chitrak handled the event extremely well.  I was touched that so many of my friends made it to the event.

One nice thing about having a PR company whilst at Apple was the fact that you would regularly get clippings coverage in the media especially after an event.   This list is based on feedback and some that i’ve seen so far…

May 28th-July5th – photo listing in the Daily Star Art section banner,

The News Today – small write-up

Prothom Alo – small write-up

ABC Radio Channel – regular event announcement

and a review

“What the eye sees, and the heart speaks” and article by Art critic, Takir Hossain in The Daily Star

IANS (Indo-Asian New Service) – picked up the story “Indian painter exhibits work for Bangladesh connoiseurs“  picked up by Thai Indian news, The Gaea News and my blog post by JalleDa and Art Investment@demo research

“Ujwala Prabhu, a fervent painter” an article by art critic, Takir Hossain, in the Dhaka Courier.

Click on pic below to see some photos from the opening.

Solo 29th May 2009

Do stop by if you’re in town.

I am busy with preparations for a solo exhibition planned for the end of May and will be back to my normal posting frequency in June ‘09.  I hope you will stop by again then.

Tonight, as I sleep, Maya will cross a hundred thousand hits and I’m delighted.  Thank you!  Your visits have kept me blogging!

This blog was created on Dec 10, 2005 and the first post,  A journey begins, was back dated to about the time I made my first painting in recent years, July ‘04.  It had to do with wanting a time line.  It’s taken a little over 3 years to get here.  The first year was pretty slow!

Along the way, I started taking photographs of life around me.  Mostly street life in the places I’ve lived in since.  I found that I enjoyed the experience.  I now stop and take photographs, like the one at the top of the post, which may never get used as a reference.  Something I couldn’t dream of in the beginning.  They were either personal shots or reference shots and nothing else.   And now I’m interested enough to have signed up for Sofobomo to make my own photo book for the year.

My first love continues to be drawing and painting.  All this while, I’ve continued to work with multiple mediums with a focus on faces and figures. I think I’ve made some progress   The reference used for the painting as well as the sketch is the same used two years apart – July 04 and July 06.

Some of you have been around supporting me from the beginning and I hope all of you ( ever the optimist!) will stick around to see where I’m headed.  Thank you once more for visiting Maya.

Exciting times.  I’ve enrolled for a short term course at UODA under the guidance of Shahid Kabir, renowned Bangladeshi Printmaker and Painter.  For a while at least, the finished pieces getting on to this blog are likely to be prints.

This piece while signed is one of those where I’ve every intention of fiddling around with some more.  But it’s off my easel and my mind for some time to come.

Lost in thought, 12″ X 12″, Oil on canvas.

The opportunity to participate in a Printmaking workshop fell into my lap earlier this year and I’m glad I didn’t let it pass me by. This workshop was organised by the Britto Arts Trust and was a little different in format from the earlier two.

There were two coordinators but there was no person conducting the workshop. Half the participants were practicing print makers, while the others were painters and sculptors being exposed to printmaking for the first time. The idea was to share ideas, methods and techniques to produce work based on the theme “Mechanical Fantasy”.

The subject took me out of my comfort zone and I spent the first 3 days just playing around with different ideas and making small sketches based on them. Of course we were busy with cleaning and polishing the zinc plates in preparation. Finally two you see below were selected.

Lines were etched and then the plate was prepared with a layer of rosen for the Aquatint process.  Unlike the earlier two workshops, I transferred the drawings onto tracing paper, reversed it and used a sharp object to transfer it again to the prepared plate.

We held an Open Studio to display the work in early Feb and there is a plan to exhibit the work more formally in a gallery soon.  A friend photographed some of the work on display.

We have many street vendors in Dhaka.  This flower seller’s expression caught my attention.  It’s turned out to be more aggressive mostly because of what I read into the situation and the stories that I built around him which kept me occupied when painting.

Using oils after a break.  The first painting has yet to be completed.  I’m calling this done.  It’s the first signed painting in 2009!    This is one of those that I’m not sure I’m done with.  The signature is just to make sure I move on.  That hasnt stopped me from making changes in the past

“Flower Seller”, 20″ X 22″, oil on canvas.

I’ve been a fan of Karin Jurick’s paintings for a while now and have been lurking around her new blog Different Strokes from Different Folks since it started a few months ago.  But it was a portrait challenge that gave me the push to jump in and also the fact that we had 3 weeks to complete it. With all the travelling that I’ve been doing this time frame was crucial for me.

It’s been a great opportunity participating  in this portrait challenge and seeing all the fabulous work posted on her blog Different Strokes from Different Folks. It’s also been great putting faces to the names.

Painting and drawing have been going on since I last posted though at a slower pace than usual as I have been away from home for a while.  Now that I’m finally back, I’ll be posting more regularly.   Seeing all the fantastic artwork on DSfDFs has had me wanting to pull out my oils from where they’ve been lying neglected these last six months.  This piece, though, has been made using acrylics on canvas and is approx 12″ X 16″.  The paints were easier to travel with.

This may go through several iterations yet but I’m happy to be back on track and doing what I like best – painting portraits.   

The Asian Biennale has come to an end and today we went and picked up our paintings.  It felt good to have “Stop or Else!” safely back at home.  

“Responsibilities” 12″ X 16″ acrylic on canvas panel