I am very excited as I just have heard that my photo of the WiB Bangalore vigil is one of the 37 finalists of the Democracy Photo Challenge:
The challange was: Take a photo that completes the phrase Democracy is… and share it with the world: http://www.democracyphotochallenge.america.gov

Short description of the message on my WiB Bangalore photo:
When more than half of the population of the world is in danger, when women still have to face with discrimination, abuse, violence, murder… that long there can be no democracy, human rights are in danger.
I can’t say the meaning of this photo better than in the words of Corinne Kumar: “We dedicate this vigil to the millions of women who did not survive, to all the women, miracles who did survive, so that one day the violence of dowry and all its related forms of violence will become unimaginable and that we may together give voice to speak the unthinkable: a world without violence against women. That would be a world to leave to our children. We live, you and I, in very violent times, times in which community and collective memories are dying. Times in which our many dreams are turning into never ending nightmares and the future increasingly fragmenting. Times that have given us a notion of progress and a development model that has dispossessed the majority, desacralised nature, destroyed whole cultures and civilisations and denigrated the women".

Why do I think it is important that I, a photographer from Belgium sent in a photo I took in Bangalore ? When we in the North talk about poverty and all different forms of violence against women in the South, usually we only refer to these women as victims and in the best case we want to rescue them. During my encounters with women in India, I indeed met victims, but EVEN MORE SO I saw such brave, strong women who didn’t want to put up with their role as victims ! “We share our stories, not only of pain, but also of courage and survival, to find a new logic, another way to knowledge and reasoning” says Corinne Kumar about the Indian Women’s Court. They started creating a new political imaginary in which they are the dancers AND they are the dance… For me this was such a thorough and rich experience and I truly believe that if we really want to change the world, it are the women of the South who will be our leaders !

Holding your hand and knowing
You have given me new strength…
And from this strength and solidarity
I became possessed by this madness
To CHANGE the WORLD
(song at the Indian Court of Women DAUGHTERS OF FIRE in Bangalore, 2009)