Our Pictures, Our Words - Laxmi Murthy

Vibrant, dynamic, spirited, and forceful. The contemporary women's
movement in India, which began in the late 1970s, fought valiantly
against dark times marked by violence and misogyny. But it also
celebrated-liberation, solidarity among women, and the joyous breaking
away from patriarchy. Its members sang, performed, and painted, in order
to draw attention to the vital issues of the time: dowry death, widow
immolation, acid throwing, and rape.Featuring over three hundred full color images, Our Pictures, Our Words
delivers a lavish pictorial history of the multifaceted Indian women's
movement, conveyed through its most immediate visual representation:
posters, drawings, pamphlets, reports, brochures, stickers,
wall-writing, and photographs. The artwork reproduced here is part of
Zubaan's six-year Poster Women project, which has attempted to locate
and archive as many posters as possible in order to visually map the
diversity of women's causes.Over the past three decades,
women's concerns have matured and broadened to include a range of issues
related to women's health, sexuality, the environment, literacy, the
impact of religion and communal violence on women's lives, political
participation, globalization, displacement, labor rights, disability
rights, class and caste issues, and many more. To capture this
many-faceted crusade, the posters in the book have been thematically
organized and annotated in detail, with information about the date the
artwork was created, the campaign it supported, the designer, the
concept behind the poster, the reaction to it, and short essays to
further document the richness of the movement.