AAW #173

Ahmedabad is celebrating World Photography Day this week. The comedy play ‘Wrong Number’ is coming to town, starring actors like Rakesh Bedi and Avtar Gill. And popular flute artist Ronu Majumdar brings out a Zen Concert.

 

The world is celebrating World Photography Day on August 19, and so is Ahmedabad. August 19 marks the day that the Daguerreotype photographic process, invented by Frenchman Louis Daguerre, was unleashed into the world by the French government. People of Ahmedabad are celebrating their photographic moments through exhibitions like Fòcas, Vision Extended, and Namami Devi Narmade. There is also a talk on how photography can be a medium to “search for the self”, by senior photographers Amit Mehra, Ashish Shah and Swapan Parekh. Meet the artists and show your work to them.

For art lovers, painter Ajit Parekh’s retrospective, which is being inaugurated by Pritzker Prize-winning architect BV Doshi, is an exciting happening of this week.

Our Art Weekly also highlights an evening of recitals of Gujarati poetry, called માનું-કંકુ. And a concert by project Zubaan, which will see singer Kavish play a musical instrument called Noori which he has made himself. Missing the vibes of the Saptak Annual Festival of Music, which went by in January of this year? Worry not, followers of Indian classical music can attend Zen Concerts to listen to popular flute player Pandit Ronu Majumdar’s compositions.

Theatre lovers of the city would not want to miss the Hindi comedy play Wrong Number, a story that revolves around an affair and stars well-known actors like Rakesh Bedi, Avtar Gill and Tanaaz Irani. Or attend a combined “drama and music gig” in which theatre group Machaan shares the stage with the band The Monologue, for the play Line. 

Our 173rd Ahmedabad Art Weekly pays tribute to Bhagvatsingh Sahib, who ruled the princely state of Gondal in Rajkot district as Maharaja,  from 1869 to 1944. One of the only Maharajas to gain a medical degree, he studied at the University of Edinburgh, and later became the Vice-President of the Indian Medical Association. Said to be one of the most progressive monarchs in Indian history, he also published the first Gujarati dictionary, an encyclopedia called Bhagavadgomandal, and wrote the book A Short History of Aryan Medical Science.