The Unforgetting – Peter Watkins

I’ve read much about this book The Unforgetting by Peter Watkins, from Tim Clark at 1000 Words and Brad Feuerhelm at ASX to being mentioned by a few as top favourites of photobooks 2019, to be honest, I didn’t quite get it at first other than the captivating cold black and white images of object assemblages and memorabilia. As Tim Clark mentioned, “the work is spared of sentimentality: objects are catalogued and composed in a manner that evokes early scientific photography or evidence gathered at a crime scene.”

The work is based on the history of his own family marked by the suicide of his mother when he was nine years old. The heart of the artist’s project is his reconciliation to that loss, through an examination of their shared German heritage.

“This is a work that explores the machinations of memory in relation to the experience of trauma,” says Watkins. “The culmination of several years work, The Unforgetting is a series made up of remnants, as well as the associated notions of time, recollection and impermanence, all bound up in the objects, places, photographs, and narrative structures circulated within the family.”

Self Portrait (2011), an image that pictures the artist stripped from the waist up and seated on a hard wooden chair. His face is cast down, fist clenched, shoulders hunched. Numerous large circles scar his smooth skin: the legacy of cupping, a well-known Chinese treatment for depression. Source @ 1000 Words

© Peter Watkins, from the book ‘The Unforgetting’; Source @ Peter Watkins

What really inspired me about this work was that the work has taken several different iterations since he began in 2010. He started out quite differently, with more of a documentary approach, visited the place where his mother had died, and filmed the village where she grew up, and interviews with family members. “What I came to realise was that everything seemed too literal to me, it was too sad and too sentimental and obvious somehow. I noticed from the filmed interviews that my family’s recollections had somehow blurred and merged into a kind of unified narrative as if the passage of time had stripped away any sense of complexity and subjectivity from each individual’s experience.”

“I didn’t want the project to feel sentimental in the way that projects about this subject so often tend to feel. It was about finding a balance between thinking and feeling. e.g. the Super 8 canisters contain home movies of my mother and her family on holiday. Instead of using those kind of seductive Super 8 images, which carry an unavoidable nostalgia, I came to think of that one picture as a way of conflating all [of the others] into one single, mysterious image that resists that kind of sentimentality. It’s an important part of the work, that resistance to the obvious or the overtly emotive.” he says.

References:

https://fotoroom.co/the-unforgetting-peter-watkins/

http://www.1000wordsmag.com/peter-watkins%E2%80%A8/

https://www.bjp-online.com/2017/06/show-peter-watkins-the-unforgetting-at-the-webber-gallery/

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/13/peter-watkins-photography-ghostly-reflection-on-grief-and-loss

https://americansuburbx.com/2015/02/peter-watkins-the-pain-of-loss-is-a-motherfucker.html

Angkor Photo Festival – Ones to Watch

bhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TThUmcg3p8M&list=WL&index=13&t=4383s

at 24:25: Sutirtha Chatterjee

at 01:10:09: Priyadarshini Ravichandran

at 01:35:09: Mien Thuy Tran (https://matca.vn/en/ones-to-watch-mien-thuy/?fbclid=IwAR3w0iBLt173EEbiqrfUTRcRjzDe1ToZA-VVlAUpYSO1U3pFmHuGzXWZDEs)

Our Songs from the Forest – Uma Bista

Another big highlight from the 15th Edition of Angkor photo festival was the solo exhibition “Our Songs from the Forest” by Nepali photographer Uma Bista. The work talks about the religious myths of women menstruation and how that still have an impact on the 21st century even though criminalisation was made.

17-year-old Nita Mijar from Mangalsen Municipality-10, Jupu has just finished her Grade 10 exams. She is responsible for a lot of work at home, in the kitchen and the fields. Her parents work and live in India while Nita, her grandmother and her younger brother live at home. Her older brother lives in Birgunj and is studying to be an engineer. Nita does not want to go the cattle shed. But if she does not go to the cattle shed for a month or two, her family and the villagers start asking questions like “Why aren’t you menstruating? What has happened? Did you have physical relations with some man? Are you pregnant?” These questions keep her going to the cattle shed. She enjoys going to the forest for walks and goes with her friends whenever she’s free. In the forest, she pours her sorrows out in songs.

© Uma Bista, from the series ‘Our Songs from the Forest’ ; Source @ Lensculture

Into the hills of Achham, women are considered impure during menstruation and are banished to cattle shed for 7 whole days every month. They are required to remain isolated from their family, and are forbidden from entering homes, kitchens, schools, and temples. They are deemed to be untouchable as it is believed that the gods would be in rage if they are to break the rules of Chhaupadi. In this belief system, it is thought that if a menstruating woman touches a tree, it will never again bear fruit; if she consumes milk, the cow will not give any more milk. They are responsible for the possible ills that might befall the family – especially with male family members e.g. accidents, deaths, illnesses, poor harvest, failures in exams etc.

Even though Chhaupadi has been criminalised and in 2017, Nepal passed a law punishing people who force women into exile during menstruating with up to three months in jail or a fine of 3,000 Nepalese rupees. However, in the five months since the new law went into effect (in August 2018), no cases have been filed against those enforcing the practice. The fear of change still runs deep and every year women and girls die from performing Chhaupadi.

Uma’s photographs take us to the young girls from Achham, into the forests around Oligaun, where they are free to sing, dance and laugh. These soft tendered portraits of the girls show their release and relief of oppression from Chhaupadi, and also a sense of power within them that they own. At the same time, there are doubts with how the future beholds for them, sharing their struggles in how to push the boundaries.

The exhibition in Angkor was held by the Riverside, which is the perfect outdoor location for this particular series. Sari, an everyday clothing for girls in Nepal and is sometimes used as a pad for mensuration, are hung onto trees symbolising a sense of freedom for these girls. They are free to flow with the wind as it blows. The work is either hung onto trees or on canvas nailed to bamboo sticks, reiterating the concepts behind the series – rural village, forest, freedom. Catch the exhibition before it ends on 18th December 2019!

© Michelle Chan, series ‘Our Songs from the Forest’ by Uma Bista at 15th Edition Angkor Photo Festival 2019