
Anita Khemka (b. 1972) read English Literature from Delhi University and Visual Merchandizing from La Salle, Singapore before she decided to become a photographer in 1996. Her photographic praxis has since been a constant endeavor to find meaning in the relations with the people in her life and their identities as people, ideas or communities. As a result she has closely followed the lives of socially marginalized and excluded groups and communities — abandoned widows, people with intellectual disability, addictions, HIV and AIDS, political minorities, sexual and gender minorities.
Anita’s work dealing with alternative sexuality was made into a German film Between the Lines – India’s Third Gender in 2005. It premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in 2005 and was a winner in all the categories at the River to River Film Festival, Florence in 2005. It also won awards at various festivals such as TLGFF Torino 2005, Max Ophüls Film Festival 2006, CGLFF Copenhagen 2006 amongst others. Her project, Sweet Sixteen (2006), portraits of sixteen-year-olds is included in a book, IMAGINING OURSELVES: Global Voices from a New Generation of Women. The series, Self-Portraits has been included in a group exhibition, Watching Me, Watching India at the Fotografie Forum International, Frankfurt (2006), in the Photoquai Biennale at the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris (2007), The Self and The Other – Portraiture in Contemporary Indian Photography for the Palau de la Virrenina and Artium in Spain, Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 years of photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh at White Chapel, London (2009).