Blood Speaks: A Ritual of Exile wins 2017 FotoEvidence Book Award

1 March 2017

The winner of the 2017 FotoEvidence Book Award is photojournalist Poulomi Basu for A Ritual of Exile: Blood Speaks. The book will be published by FotoEvidence this year. It investigates the causes and the consequences of normalised violence against women in Nepal. Perpetrated under the guise of Hindu tradition, the root cause of this violence is the belief in the impurity of a women’s menstrual blood.

Anjali Kumari Khang is 12 years old. "I am not happy. I do not want to get married. I hope my husband gets a job in a foreign city. Then I can come back to my mother's home and stay for as long as I want to." Child marriage is rampant in the north eastern district of Nepal. Girls are seen as a burden and an additional mouth to feed and are often married off at a very young age. However, it is also a popular belief that villagers often marry off their girls before their menstruation starts, as it is believed if they do so, then their immediate family will go to heaven. Einerwa Village, Saptari district, Nepal. © Poulomi Basu.

Hidden, under-reported, and unresolved, these women are untouchable and, as a result, this violence takes the form of “exiles” – a way to keep menstruation shrouded in mystery and taboo, a weapon to shame women into subservience. In a world that is ravaged by war, the media is often full of images of those affected by conflict but, for many, the conflict begins at home.

Poulomi Basu’s multidisciplinary project, combining still photography, virtual reality films and, now, a book, is designed to reach multiple audiences across different platforms, print, virtual, and physical installations. “I want to turn my audience into activists and crack open the veil of silence and shame around women whose lives are shattered by such gender based violence,” Basu says.

The book will reveal how the chaupadi ritual disrupts the lives of girls, exposes them to recurring danger and imposes unjust restrictions on women throughout their lives. It will contain approximately 60 images and associated texts.

Finalists

Jan Grarup – Mosul Exodus
Amnon Gutman – Ukraine Crisis- The East
Fabian Muir – Searching for North Korea
Alessio Romenzi – This is Just the Beginning

The 2017 FotoEvidence Book Award jury included: Nina Berman (Noor), Elizabeth Biondi, James Colton (Zuma), Eli Reed (Magnum), Molly Roberts (National Geographic) and John Stanmeyer (National Geographic).

About the FotoEvidence Book Award

The FotoEvidence Book Award is granted each year to one photographer whose work demonstrates courage and commitment in the pursuit of human rights and social justice. The work is published in a high-quality, hardcover book, as part of a series of FotoEvidence books dedicated to photographers working to expose violations of human rights and assaults on human dignity around the world.