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Photo Show Live with Pradip Malde

Pradip Malde will be joining the JKC Gallery remotely on October 5th at noon.

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Pradip Malde will join Michael Chovan-Dalton via Zoom to talk about his new book, From Where Loss Comes.

From Where Loss Comes is an unblinking look at how sacrifice and belonging are deeply rooted in the human experience. Sixty photographs and close to 9,000 words consider pain and suffering that is private, sacrificial, and yet rattles against values that are thought of as being inalienable — our fundamental human rights. It is a story of the root causes of female genital cutting and mutilation (FGM/C).

The exact origins of cutting are unknown and have evolved in disparate cultures as a tribal ritual, a rite of passage, or a religious practice. For photographer Pradip Malde the practice of cutting is a symptom of a deeper cultural significance: “We have a huge genetic desire to protect ourselves through communities,” he says. “We want to clearly delineate and we want to protect ourselves from outsiders. And one way of building a psychological fence around those who are closest to us is by terrorizing them.”
From Where Loss Comes is Pradip Malde’s attempt to answer the question, “why do we inflict violence on those who are close to us in order for them to stay close to us.” Malde, who spent his early childhood in Tanzania, began this inquiry after visiting the country again in 2016. He met Sarah Mwaga (to whom the book is dedicated), a prominent anti-FGM/C activist, who showed Malde a hand-forged cutting tool. Together they conceived the idea of Malde using photographs of cutting tools as a means to document and educate within local communities. Malde, whose practice is often centered around community and violence, explains that he has always used photography, “as a healing process, and for setting up a stronger glue between members of a community.”

From Where Loss Comes was photographed with an 8×10 camera, then contact printed with the platinum-palladium printing-out process to achieve a unique and beautiful print.

Pradip Malde is a photographer and professor at the University of the South, Sewanee, TN. Much of his work considers the experience of loss and how it serves as a catalyst for regeneration. He received a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, which resulted in his book, “From Where Loss Comes” (Charcoal, 2022) and is represented in the collections of the Museum of the Art Institute, Chicago; Princeton University Museum; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Yale University Museum and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, among others.