About TDF Session 132
More details on the session and the Zoom link available on Registration.
About Ramya Reddy
Ramya is a visual storyteller with over fifteen years of experience as a professional photographer. She has worked with several lifestyle and hospitality brands, and her work has been published and exhibited widely. Her love of the Nilgiris manifested in the documentation of her nine-year-long journey and deep research about the indigenous communities in the region as ‘Soul of the Nilgiris’ – a critically acclaimed book encompassing oral narratives, conversations, writings and photographs. At Coonoor & Co, a lifestyle brand she has founded, Ramya’s dream is to bring alive the stories from the mountains and the slow, kind, and mindful living they inspire in a holistic way. As one crucial expression of the brand she is creating, she is actively working towards reinventing the rare art forms of the Nilgiri indigenous communities she holds dear through thoughtful interventions to upskill the artisans and contemporize their art forms, allowing their exquisite work to resonate deeply in a modern world.
For more information, visit https://www.ramyareddy.com/
About the book – Soul of the Nilgiris
Created over nine years, Soul of the Nilgiris is a labour of love and the story of a place told through a personal tapestry of oral narratives, conversations, and writings with over 300 photographs. The book traverses the cultural, ecological, colonial and the-now drastically altered landscape of the Blue Mountains situated in the Western Ghat region of southern India while attempting to draw attention to the lives of its indigenous people and the synergistic way in which they were attuned to the natural world and the dire need to give voice to the relevance of this knowledge in the times we live in.
The book thoughtfully combines prose, photography, design, and community involvement: the spines for every one of the 2000 books were hand-embroidered by the Toda women artisans over two years. Dotted with anecdotes, and short readings, the talk will trace the journey of the book from concept to completion: research, working with the indigenous communities, community involvement, and the creative process.
For more information, visit https://www.soulofthenilgiris.com/