PhotoMuse, a photography museum, has opened a permanent museum at Chungal, near Kodakara, in Mattathur panchayat, on Sunday.
Herbert Ascherman Jr., American photographer and founding director of the Cleveland Photo Fest, USA, inaugurated the museum. The museum will open up a space where the public can delve into the socio-cultural, natural, and photographic history of the country and beyond.
A seminal exhibition of photographic history, titled The Evolution of Photograph as a Palpable Object, curated by Unnikrishnan Pulikkal, the director of PhotoMuse, was also opened on the same day at the museum. Murali Cheeroth, chairperson of the Kerala Lalithakala Akademi, inaugurated the exhibition, which will be open for three months.
The exhibition will showcase a collection of historical and modern photographic printmaking processes. Spanning from the 1850s to the present, it traces the evolution of the photograph as a handheld object over the centuries, exhibiting originals collected from different parts of the world, according to the organisers.
PhotoMuse, arguably the first-of-its-kind institution in Kerala, has more than 15,000 museum objects related to photography, photographic equipment, cultural documents, books, and digital images in its permanent collection.
PhotoMuse is run by a public charitable trust Better Art Foundation (BAF) and managed by photographers, artists, and educators.
