Tender connections… “After years of documenting the cruelties visited upon other women… [and] advocating for gender equity” the London-based artist and activist Poulomi Basu is now centring on her “own traumas”, writes Nicole Acheampong in an interview with Basu for Elephant’s new issue. The result is Basu’s ongoing photo series Fireflies, shot in her hometown of Calcutta—where both she and her mother “survived profound violence”—and serves as “an emphatic reclamation of the body”. This image of the pair, arms and hands intertwined, is particularly moving. “This is a private body language,” notes Acheampong. “It is too convoluted to be an easeful embrace, but still, in their ways, one woman cradles the other.” Read the full feature in Elephant 45—out April 20.
