Lola Mac Dougall is the force behind GoaPhoto, which first launched in 2015 with the intention of taking fine art photography out of the gallery. Visitors were invited to immerse themselves in open-air photographic exhibitions and installations across Panaji. Since then, the festival has held a second edition and has also inspired JaipurPhoto, which transformed popular landmarks – including Hawa Mahal, City Palace and Jantar Mantar – into outdoor exhibition spaces.

Showing for three days from 6 to 8 December, 2019, in the quaint village of Aldona in North Goa, a new edition of GoaPhoto will feature site-specific exhibitions in six private residential homes. Over an email interview, Lola talks about her process of setting up the festival, tells us what to watch out for, and reveals the festivals from around the world that have been catching her eye.

How did Aldona come to be the location for the festival and the starting point for your project, Aldona, Through Family Eyes? Tell us a little more about the project.

 Both Akshay Mahajan (my partner in crime for the festival) and I live close to Aldona, a village which nobody can deny is Goa at its most charming. We are regulars there, as some of our friends are based in the village. Since we could count on access to these homes, we thought we could use that advantage to start. Today we have six home-venues. 

The idea of a walking photography festival is very dear to us, and our area of intervention is restricted to a particular vaddo, Quitula - we jokingly refer to this edition of GoaPhoto as #afestivalinavaddo.

Aldona, Through Family Eyes is one of the most important projects in this coming edition of GoaPhoto. It is an artistic exploration of vernacular photographs from Aldona, a village that is not only rich in history and personal anecdotes (stories of migration, of objects making transcontinental trips, of globetrotting melodies and recipes) but also - and equally importantly - has left a valuable legacy of photographic archives. The aim of Aldona Through Family Eyes is to offer a glimpse of these riches - acquired through in-depth interviews - and also to re-interpret them. Portuguese curator/artist Angela Berlinde and Akshay himself are responsible for this artistic re-reading of family photographs from the village.

Both JaipurPhoto and GoaPhoto feature some site-specific photographic displays outside of an institutional or gallery setting. How does the public/private space and open-air/domestic space influence the different works you display at each festival?

Both the projects you mention share a common feature: the desire for the photography we are showcasing to be related to the built heritage that hosts it, and the assigning of an important place to the figure of the curator.

While the festival in Jaipur was held in public, open-air locations and in big formats, GoaPhoto is a ‘domesticated’ festival of sorts, as we display international photography on a small, domestic scale and setting.

Using the home as a venue allows for a semi-private experiencing of the exhibited works - not exempt from voyeurism. This in turn favours a certain type of photography; photography related to the domestic has become the running thread of the festival. The other two lines we are exploring in the upcoming edition - food photography and vernacular photography - are no strangers to this overarching theme.

You mention on your website: "Taking fine art photography out of the gallery is another instance of our penchant for all things middlebrow.” Is the gallery taken too seriously?

I feel one of the merits of our proposal lies in creating bridges between fine art photography and everyday life, while questioning the art gallery as the privileged locus to experience art.

In contrast to the aseptic white cube gallery space, our home-venues retain their in situ furniture. This encourages site-specificity while testing our ability as curators and exhibition designers to work around them: not one nail is hammered on account of the festival, as we want to minimise our intrusion while investigating how the two aesthetics - the photographic and the domestic - engage with each other.

How does this edition of GoaPhoto compare with previous editions? Tell us what we absolutely cannot miss seeing at the next edition.

I am convinced of the merits of every work we are displaying. However, I have to admit that I am enamoured by Pamela Singh’s ‘Days at Lutholim', and am very proud of showing this work for the first time in India.

The lunch we are organising with the Edible Archives is another highlight as it takes place in one of our most beautiful venues: The Condillac family sala, which has a patina that can only be acquired after, say, its 300 years of existence. This sala will host our exhibition on Aldona vernacular photography. Standing at their windows, the family can oversee their organic farm and their unruly duck population. This is the setting we offered to Chef Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar of the celebrated Edible Archives (one of the hits of the latest Kochi Biennale). Her brief: to curate a meal for the festival using some of the local produce. The chef, who is about to open her first restaurant in Goa, has successfully managed to elevate indigenous rice to an art form, and we are happy to offer the festival’s visitors the opportunity to join us in this farm-to-table communal meal that celebrates both visual and palatable memories.

We love the idea of viewing the photographs in people’s private homes. How does this work in a practical sense with the installation and display?

Normally, it is only one section of the house that is offered to us, and visiting hours are established, so as to minimise any disturbance. Perhaps the main originality of our proposal is that some of the photographic works are selected as a response to the spaces presented to us. In other words, photography doesn’t always come first, which I realise is a funny statement coming from a photography festival.

From a practical perspective, when planning the exhibition we adapt to the pre-existing furniture and objects in the houses, and work around them - it is a test of our ability as curators and exhibition designers to be able to do so. The result is that both ‘our’ photographs and the objects and spaces end up influencing each other, as their meanings are mutually affected.

In your opinion, what makes an interesting festival? Are there any others you like in particular and would recommend?

For me, an interesting festival is that which offers something very specific, and related to what is unique to the location. The beauty of the location obviously helps, but it is not sufficient without the vision. Going back to the idea of a festival in a vaddo, I am enjoying this time thinking about the hyper-local. I use this term not in an academic sense but in an intuitive way, with the belief that looking attentively at the local one can achieve the most universal of experiences. I admire festivals that mix genres, the high-brow and low-brow and where the art direction is visible in every outcome.

Some photography festivals that have inspired us - sometimes from a distance - for their originality of consistency are KYOTOGRAPHIE, Getxophoto, Images Vevey, and Chobi Mela.