February 4, 10.00 - 13.00 (CET)/14.30 - 17.30 PM (IST)
In 2019, ICAS:MP commissioned a series of photo essays and video diaries on the Indian general elections scheduled to take place that summer. Elections are routinely celebrated as proof of democracy’s triumphant and astonishing endurance in India, and billed as the “biggest and most complex electoral exercise” in the “world’s largest democracy.” Our aim was to go beyond the hype: to visually document election campaigns across different Indian states and capture some of the rhythms and rituals, sounds and sights of electoral democracy in action. An additional and central focus of the visual diaries project was to look at the use of media (print, TV, audio-visual and social media) across electoral campaigns, and their deployment by the different political parties.