By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR: Emerging photographer Nanki Singh presents “Aaine Tak Ka Safar” at Confluence ‘24, Stainless Gallery. Open to public from June 16-22, 2024, 11 am – 7 pm. This powerful exhibition, highlighting acid attack survivors, also serves as a fundraiser for the Chhanv Foundation. Aaine Tak Ka Safar” is a sensitive, yet hard-hitting body of work that offers us a glimpse into the world attack survivors. The exhibition aims to raise awareness about these brave and resolute women and double up as a fundraiser for the Chhanv Foundation which helps with their medical, financial, and psychological rehabilitation.
Nanki has worked closely with the Chhanv Foundation for many years now. What started as a college project borne out of curiosity about heinous gender-based crime, turned into a deep determination to help these girls. Their optimistic and cheerful outlook to life was an inspiration for Nanki. Rather than seeing victims, she saw that they were optimistic, had dreams of the future and were not unlike other young girls of a similar age. She wanted to present these girls as she saw them, as girls next door, living life to the best of their abilities.
New York based photographer Nanki Singh is passionate about social photography and thinks of her lens as a bridge that connects the hearts and minds of her viewers to the diverse stories, emotions, and journeys that make up our world. Her work largely focuses on the resolute and determined women of India and offers a glimpse into their often very difficult lives.
She recently exhibited at the Chelsea Art Gallery in Manhattan, New York in March 2024. Her show, “Aaina tak ka safar”, or "The journey to the mirror” features a series of photographs on the survivors of acid attacks, a heinous gender based crime that involves the premeditated throwing of highly-corrosive acid on a victim, usually on her face. These attacks cause physiological and psychological trauma, severe pain, permanent disfigurement, subsequent infections, and often blindness. The survivors who were photographed were teenagers at the time of the attack.
Nanki has worked closely with these women for four years and is deeply committed to their rehabilitation and is awe of their resilience, positivity and strength. Nanki says the name “Aaina tak ka safar” has a very special significance because the girls have repeatedly told her how difficult it was for them to look at a mirror after their attacks.
The Chelsea show included a fund raiser for the Chhanv Foundation that looks after the medical, psychological and financial rehabilitation of these women. She raised $13,000 which all went towards upgrading a café run by these women. This was her second fund raiser for the Foundation. She did her first fundraiser for them when she was only 18 years old.
Nanki is the recipient of numerous awards including an $82,000 Silas Rhodes Scholarship in 2020, The Brian Weil Memorial Award awarded to a photographer of exemplary integrity and ideology and the Mentors Award awarded to the top students of the graduating batch at the School of Visual Arts.
Nanki has a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Photography and Video from the School of Visual Arts in New York and is an alumni of the Step by Step School, Noida. She is an avid golfer and an insane dog lover.
After the success of her debut show in New York, her series, “Aaina tak ka safar” will be on display at the Stainless Gallery, Mathura Road, New Delhi from the 15th of June 2024 to the 22nd of June 2024.
