A two-day exhibition of photographs, ‘Reframed’, taken by young students to highlight various aspects of North Chennai, began in the city on Friday.
Inaugurating the exhibition at Amethyst, P. Sainath, founder-editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), said such events should be organised in residential areas of North Chennai and initiatives taken to motivate such young students.
"We have been overwhelmed by the photography of power. This is the photography of protest," said Mr. Sainath.
In the photographs, the students had captured key aspects of protests by marginalised communities. For instance, a photographer had covered a gathering of protesting women and a banner with a hashtag #StopAdaniSavePulicat.
Photographs of a fly-ash polluted Kosasthalaiyar, a rally to save poromboke land, flooded residential areas of Pulianthope, waterbodies near sand dunes, water gods at an eroded shoreline and football practice of young persons in the backdrop of a polluting thermal power plant in Ennore were key attractions.
G. Logeshwaran, 21, a post-graduate student of clinical research, said some of his photographs focused on the pollution by fly ash in Kosasthalaiyar, caused by the thermal power plants in Ennore.
Environment activist Nityanand Jayaraman said North Chennai was a melting pot of cultures and cuisines, home to Chennai's best athletes. "Referred to as Black Town in the days of the British Raj, North Chennai even today, remains a site of discrimination. The historically marginalised and predominantly working class communities of Ennore and Manali are forced to live amidst the highest concentration of dirty, toxic, carbon-spewing climate-changing industries in all of South India. For all the unfair treatment it has suffered, North Chennai remains a complex emotion to its residents, and a beacon of resilience and hope to the rest of us," said Mr. Jayaraman.