User:Indiaphotoarchive/sandbox

India Photo Archive Foundation (IPAF) is registered as a Public Charitable Trust. It is a trust for creation of awareness of contemporary and historical photographs, creation of archives & collections and highlighting their historical value, and to encourage their dissemination, access and use for academic, institutional & cultural purposes.

The archive has images of the Indian struggle for independence, early years of India as a free nation, the dawn of industrial India, personal collections of royalty and the Raj, pictures of the common people, of travel and leisure, events and festivities, scintillating moments in sports, records of marriage, births, deaths, mourning and celebration. These archives form an essential part of India's cultural heritage.

Mission
For most part, Indian photographs, be they journalistic, political, personal, developmental or social, today languish in institutions or homes, leaving their historical significance forgotten and their physical fragility ignored. The India Photo Archive Foundation has been established with a view to identify, preserve and document such photographic legacies. Towards this end, it aims to restore original photographs and negatives, digitise their contents preserve, annotate and document them.

The Foundation encourages the use of such archives in educational, institutional and cultural endeavours through exhibitions, publishing and the internet. The foundation also aims to work towards the development of a platform for amateur and professional photography over the ages.

It seeks to encourage a wider discourse on the content, politics and aesthetics of photography and contribute towards creating a culture of dialogue on diverse narratives of photographic archives that are treasured as documentary and artistic works.

History
As one of the earliest photographic archives in the country, The India Photo Archive Foundation began with the historical collection of photojournalist, Kulwant Roy, presented to Aditya Arya, himself an eminent photographer.

Kulwant Roy (1914-1984) was a press photographer who started his photographic career in his twenties, learning the craft from Raj Gopal, of the Gopal Chita Kutter studio in Lahore. He then joined the Royal Indian Air Force in 1941, where he used his newly acquired skills to take aerial shots from the cockpits of planes. Headstrong and patriotic, Kulwant found it difficult to tolerate the discriminatory policies of his British superiors and had to leave the air force after being court-martialled. Relocating in the mid-forties to rejoin Raj Gopal's brother, Lalit, who had moved to Delhi before partition, Roy set up Associated Press Photos in Mori Gate. Over the next few years, Kulwant witnessed many of the countless events that led to the independence of India. Following mainstream national leaders, major meetings and events, travels and engagements, his work captures the spirit and energy, hopes and aspirations of those times.

The Neel Dongre Awards for Excellence in Photography
India Photo Archive Foundation announced their Awards and Grants initiative in January 2012 with the Neel Dongre Awards for Excellence in Photography being the first one in the series. The awards have been proposed to be divided in the following manner:

Beginners' Awards
Four Awards worth Rs. 25,000 each in four categories, namely:Travel, People, Fine Art and Family Documentation

Serious Practitioners Awards
3 Awards worth Rs. 3 Lakhs each

Special Award for Social Documentary Photography for an NGO
1 Award worth Rs. 1 Lakh

History in the Making- The Visual Archives of Kulwant Roy
Kulwant Roy was among the handful of photojournalists in India, who documented the eventful years immediately before and after independence. His prints and negatives remained forgotten in boxes for over 20 years after his death in 1984, when their inheritor, Aditya Arya, began cataloguing them. In the process he discovered a rare and valuable visual archive, including many unpublished pictures of national leaders and events.

"History in the Making" started being put together in late 2007. The foreward has been written by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the entire book has been published in hardback by Harper Collins India. Only 5,000 copies are being made available in its first print run.

''Enriched by an insightful text, by historian Indivar Kamtekar, the book covers the meetings and deliberations of the Congress Party and its key figures, The Muslim League, the INA trials, Gandhi's visit to the North-West Frontier Province, the integration of the princely states, milestones of progress in the newly formed nation and the visits of foreign dignitaries. A personal album in the end adds a sociological commentary to the times. History in the Making-The Visual Archives of Kulwant Roy', is a collector's item for anyone who wishes to discover the multi-layered dimensions behind India's tryst with destiny''. - From the foreward by India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh