Photo Book design for ‘Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh - One Hundred days of Resistance’ by Prarthna Singh. The book is an attempt to resist the active erasure of a political movement.
Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh is a multimedia portrait that collates photographs, maps, drawings, letters, lyrics and other memorabilia from the protest site, Shaheen Bagh. The project, in book form, is testimony to the infinite courage of the women of Shaheen Bagh and their songs of freedom
- Prarthna Singh
In 2020 right after the Shaheen Bagh protests stopped abruptly, Prarthna Singh approached us with a loosely assembled dummy containing all the images she had captured during her time at the protest, alongside other ephemera from the protest site.
This dummy resembled a journal of her documentation, serving as our visual inspiration for the book's design.
Over the course of two years, amidst the pandemic, we collaborated closely with Singh to craft the book. Drawing inspiration from the protest site itself, the book begins with a full-spread image of a printed fabric that formed a boundary at the site. Since Singh was present at the protest site nightly, the book serves as her personal documentation of the events. Singh also created simple maps onsite to help friends navigate, an integral part of the book. Every design element, including poems, ghazals, songs, and letters, was handwritten by the authors and scanned for the book.
The book incorporates three types of paper—uncoated, coated, and coloured—to highlight various aspects. Additionally, it features a schedule booklet compiling protests nationwide on a single day, originally sourced from an Instagram post by Pranav Sawhney. The written content is translated into Hindi, English, and Urdu.
The book's cover is particularly noteworthy, crafted from handwoven Kora cotton by the artisans of 'Women Weave' from Maheshwar, in support of the project. The title is blind embossed on the front and screen printed on the spine. The deliberately uneven edges evoke the feeling of a journal and were skilfully executed by Naveen Printers in New Delhi.
In addition to the book, we designed a special corrugated reusable packaging, a tote bag, and a limited special edition set of the book, accompanied by a signed and numbered giclee print.
Team Bombay Duck Designs: Zeenat Kulavoor, Sameer Kulavoor, Humera Khan, Swapnil Sawant and Dnyanesh Patale.
Essay: Skye Arundhati Thomas
Poems written and produced by: Sabika Abbas Naqvi, Aamir Aziz and Ankur Tewari.
Letter written and produced by Nasreen
Printing: Naveen Printers, New Delhi, India.
Handbound in: handwoven Kora cotton by Women Weave, Maheshwar.
2022