BIND Photobook Library aims to promote the visibility of independent and self-published photo books and encourage buying books from artists and publishers. The objective is to nurture and expand the photo book culture in the region. We are also building a collection of books that will be made available to the public for consultation through photography festivals and other art-related events in the region.
The BIND library has already received over 100 photo books from across the world, and counting. These have been generously donated to us by artists, publishers and institutions that believe in our purpose: to share these books with as many people as we can while engaging in discussions around photography and photo books.
Our collection includes a large selection of limited-edition photo books, monographs, magazines and catalogs on photography with an emphasis on work from South Asia.
New Conversations around Old Photographs
In 1896, Rabindranath Tagore wrote, “A hundred years from today who are you, sitting, reading a poem of mine, under curiosity’s sway–a hundred years from today?”
As part of its introduction to Nepal, BIND will be collaborating with photo.circle in an effort to examine the relationship between the memories of visitors to the Photo Kathmandu festival and the city of Kathmandu itself. BIND aims to begin creating a map of the city through photographs from the Nepal Picture Library (NPL)’s archives, oral interviews and new images.
While NPL strives to document an inclusive history of the Nepali people by encouraging inviduals and families to contribute their photographs and stories to its archives, BIND intends to infuse these stories with a layer of reverie and fantasy by inviting those unfamiliar with the images to have a conversation with them.
In playing with old photographs that have been effectively stripped of their context in this way, BIND seeks to uncover stories that have been long-suppressed, memories that are yet to be revisited and dreams that have all but faded. These histories, fictions, travel stories, anecdotes and biographies will serve as fuel for BIND’s fluid exhibition that will evolve as the festival progresses.
It is our hope to create a space that can, for a few days, connect people to one another through their memories of a place.
Visitors to the exhibition will also have access to BIND’s public photobook library.
Readings on Art and Photography
BIND will present an experimental performance with artist readings of texts by Janette Winterson, Hervé Guibert, Aveek Sen and others.