For the first time Instagram is going to hold a photo exhibition in India. The exhibition is going to be held in Kolkata from 7th January 2016. Social Media is now a days virtually present on every smart phone and with time, even professionals are becoming fond of its special filters. So this photo exhibition by Instagram is indeed a big event.
The event will be curating community-generated Instagram posts that are around the theme— Celebrating Diversity of Bengal. The exhibition will have pictures covering various festivals of West Bengal. The formal invitation states that the exhibition will also include images from the local Instagram community which gives the glimpse of wildlife, people, food, landscape and much more about the city. As per Soumya Sankar Ghosal, a city photographer who is a part of Calcutta Instagrammers and photo communities Streets of Calcutta said that 15-odd pictures are going to be displayed at ICCR.
Facebook official contacted Soumya Sankar Ghosal and other members of The Group Streets of Calcutta and Calcutta Instagrammers a week ago. They were sent a mail asking whether they were interested to collaborate in curating the exhibition. The officials asked them to select photos of Bengal from the photos posted on Instagram. The group Streets of Calcutta has more than 5,000 members whereas Calcutta Instagrammers have around 2,000 members. Handles posting photos of Bengal regularly were followed and were contacted. The photos collected were sent to the Facebook team.
The authorities concerned, selected 15 photos from the 50 photos sent. Those photographers whose photos are selected were contacted so that an intellectual property release agreement could be signed between the participants and the officials.The inauguration will be done by Derek O’Brien, the MP of Trinamool Congress. The exhibition is held at the right time as Bengal Global Business Summit 2016 starts on the same day.
