Photo Exhibition: ‘Present Absent’. Italian Piazzas and New Delhi captured during lockdown

The Exhibition ends on 10th December 2020. Open to Public . Entry upon request and on approval only: Kindly mail your request to iicnewdelhi@esteri.it with the subject line “Photography Exhibition – Present Absent”. Entry restrictions: Only 2 visitors at a time, or 4 visitors from the same household. The original project included twenty-one Italian piazzas, from the north to the south, rendered in the words of Italian writers and in images by Italian photographers. A direct testimony of the beauty of the country through its main squares, empty during the days of the national emergency. We present a selection of nine of the more prominent photographs. Piazze [In]visibili is an initiative promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, conceived and curated by Marco Delogu and published by Punctum. A week after Delhi’s lockdown in late March 2020, photographer Parul Sharma captured these haunting black and white images of the city’s timeless architecture, from the Moghul Empire to the British Raj. Her images of desolate imperial boulevards, deserted markets, dystopian vistas, and abandoned regal roads are an ethereal testament of Delhi’s brave war against a merciless virus. Her book Dialects of Silence- Delhi under Lockdown published by Roli Books was the inspiration for this tableaux of photographs of the city of her birth.