Event Invitation: Women – Out Of The Frame Photographic Exhibition
July 3, 2013
Photographer: Brett Davies Australia/Hikkaduwa
Photographer: Brett Davies Australia/Hikkaduwa

The project’s aim is to provide photographers in Sri Lanka a platform to present images that ‘go beyond the traditional, objectified and stereotypical portrayal of women common in mainstream media’. Submissions came from Battaramulla, Batticaloa, Bemmulla, Trincomalee, Hikkaduwa, Jaffna, Kandy, Kurunegala, Matara, Hambantota, Vavuniya, Warkapola and beyond, achieving one of the project’s main objectives which was to reach out to photographers countrywide, particularly those who, due to war, had limited access to this type of cultural exchange. As Cynthia Cohen’s study Creative approaches to Reconciliationillustrates, “investment in the arts and cultural work are critical to promoting coexistence and reconciliation in the aftermath of violent conflict.”
As a country emerging from a thirty-year conflict, visual media is pivotal in shaping opinions and perceptions. During the period of the exhibition a series of presentations and workshops that support the education, and development of conceptual and technical photographic skills, will be conducted. The workshop programme will encompass digital workflow, telling a story through photography and will encourage discussion and debate on context, ethics and the importance of visual media in making meaning.
“To say that photographs lie implies that they might tell the truth; but the beauty of their nature is exactly to say nothing, neither to lie nor not to.” —Stanley Cavell (1985)
An exhibition catalogue will be available and the exhibition website (www.outofthrframe.lk) will be launched to coincide with the opening of the exhibition. These exhibition and workshops are supported by the Royal Norwegian Embassy, the National Peace Council, and the Goethe Institute.