Photographic award

A photograph shot by Bombay based freelance photographer Farah Gherda has been selected for display in a special year long online presentation by SeeMe, the world’s largest online community of artists and art photographers, states the photographer in an email to Parsiana. The selection of the photograph of veiled women participating in the festival of Holi at a village called Douji near Mathura was Gherda’s entry in the 5th Annual Exposure Photography Awards Contest conducted by SeeMe. "This image will feature in a book to be published by them (SeeMe), titled Exposure Collections under a section called ‘Documentary Collection,’” she writes. A digitally reproduced image of the photograph was displayed at The Louvre in Paris, at the reception prior to the awards ceremony.

Farah Gherda

Award winning photo (top) and another frame

In conversation with Parsiana, Gherda, who has exhibited her work at four showings in Bombay, said that she has travelled all over India to document religious festivals, as these occasions allow her the freedom to capture a variety of people, movements and forms. This creative professional said that besides the chaos of noisy and animated spaces, she finds inspiration in the ordinary thi­­ngs that she sees around herself daily and in trying to capture beauty in the mundane. "I look for lines, colors, form, movement and emotion; not only in the subject itself, but also, more introspectively, within myself, as I photograph them,” says the 27-year-old, who was born in Calcutta, and where her mother Navaz and father Sarosh, an ex-employee of Thai Airways live. She studied Mass Communications and Videography at St Xavier’s College in that city and then took a two-year course in visual arts at the Shari Academy of Professional Photography in Bombay.
Gherda, who idolizes American street photographer Elliot Erwitt, states that like him she believes that photography is all about finding something interesting in an ordinary place. Her diverse professional engagements include photographic coverage of the World Zoroastrian Congress in Bombay in December 2013 and a video shoot for her musician brother Kaizad, besides several advertising and event based shoots. Her work includes coverage of the NDTV Greenathon, a television based fund raiser and the University Cricket Cup in 2012.
Calcutta, where she grew up and studied, features high on her list of favorite places: she has photographed the Durga Puja festival at Calcutta extensively, cinematographed a short film on the subject of the city’s eunuchs titled Diaries of Transformation and is working on photographs and illustrations for a compilation of essays and poems "on the beautiful and soulful city of Calcutta,” she says.
Gherda is also working on her own personal projects "which include a series on chairs, reflections, staircases and light.”