Showcasing Kerala as an experiential tourism destination in all its  charm and diversity, State Tourism Department opened its landmark all-India photo exhibition ‘Lenscape Kerala’ here today, featuring 100 curated frames by 10 leading travel and media photographers of the country.

State Tourism Minister P A Mohamed Riyas today inaugurated the exhibition through online, setting off the show to tour nine other cities across the country including Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai in a span of three months.

Suman Billa, IAS, Additional Secretary and Director General, Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, was the Chief Guest at the function held at the Travancore Palace Gallery in the capital city.  

Sreedhanya Suresh, IAS, Additional Director(General), Department of Tourism, Government of Kerala, welcomed the gathering. Dr Aswathy Srinivas, Additional Resident Commissioner, Kerala House, New Delhi,  Curator Uma Nair and Photography Director Balan Madhavan offered felicitations. Ajeesh Kumar R, Deputy Director, Department of Tourism, Government of Kerala proposed vote of Thanks.

The exhibition will be on show from 11 am to 7pm on January 21,22 and 23.

Terming the exhibition as an invitation to travellers to come and enjoy panoramic landscapes and cultural diversity of Kerala, Shri Riyas said this pioneering initiative will be  made an annual feature of Kerala Tourism, each year with a separate group of photographers such as women and youth being invited to join the project.

“ Lenscape Kerala is a creative endeavour that showcases the range and scale of Kerala’s offerings for travellers of our time, who look for complete experience of places they visit”, the Minister said.

The contributing photographers of this edition of Lenscape Kerala had travelled through different landscapes, framing a range of themes such as nature, monsoon, heritage, rural and coastal life, cuisine, festivals and spirituality.  They had enjoyed complete creative freedom in their pursuit, which has yielded a rich harvest of frames that celebrate the experience of Kerala, the Minister noted.

Besides its focus on Kerala from different angles and perspectives, the exhibition also serves as a way-finder for travellers planning to visit God’s Own Country, he said.

In the coming years, the exhibition will bring before the viewers images of Kerala from different groups of photographers, the Minister said.

“ It could be women photographers who would be invited to participate in the project in a particular year while it could be the youth for another year.  It could be photographers from abroad who would be contributing for another annual edition of the show. This will allow full display of creative and explorative talents of the participants in celebrating Kerala as a living mosaic of immense visual possibilities,” Riyas said.

Suman Billa noted that Kerala is essentially a destination with lived experiences and what a photo exhibition like this essentially does is to bring before viewers across the nation the land’s many dimensions, making them to pause, think and relate.

Besides its renewed focus on Kerala, the exhibition also spotlights on a wide range of sites and experiences that have largely remained unexplored, he said.

It is also significant that this trend-setting project comes at a time when Kerala has been registering record footfalls as an all-season experiential tourism destination, the Minister added.

Conceived as a moving platform that carries the land’s warmth across the country, Lenscape Kerala features photographs of Aishwarya Sridhar, Amit Pasricha, H Satish, Kounteya Sinha, Manoj Arora, Natasha Kartar Hemrajani, Saibal Das, Saurabh Anand Chatterjee, Shivang Mehta and Umesh Gogna, shot during their sojourn in Kerala during November and December last year.

The exhibition is structured by eminent curator Smt Uma Nair with the support of noted wildlife and conservation photographer Shri Balan Madhavan.

The exhibition will be touring Vadodara (Jan 27-29), Ahmedabad (Feb 3-5), Mumbai (Feb 11-14), Pune (Feb 17-20), Bengaluru (Feb 27-Mar1), Chennai (Mar 4-7), Hyderabad (Mar 12-14), Kolkata (Mar 22-24) and finally reaching Surat on March 29 and coming to a close on March 31.