EXPOSURE /36: A Love Letter to Life Through the Lens
Bikalpa Art Foundation is proud to present EXPOSURE /36, a thought-provoking solo photo exhibition by Anne Mai Baan, opening on Friday, July 4 at 5:00 PM at Bikalpa Art Center, Pulchowk, Lalitpur.
This intimate exhibition explores the power of pause—moments that stop us emotionally, mentally, and physically. Drawing from the dual meaning of exposure—both as a photographic process and a personal experience—the project presents 36 carefully composed frames as 36 opportunities to reflect, confront, and connect with what moves us most deeply. Each image captures a fragment of vulnerability, clarity, or transformation, offering viewers a visual diary of lived intensity.
The title, EXPOSURE /36, carries layered symbolism. The “/” is inspired by its poetic roots—a brief pause for reflection—while the number 36 references the standard number of exposures on a roll of analog film. Together, they form a visual narrative of moments brought to light through the act of seeing and feeling. Each frame invites visitors to not only witness but experience the artist’s introspections—delicate yet bold in their honesty.
We warmly invite everyone to join us for the opening and to walk through this evocative series of personal frames. Let yourself be drawn into an atmosphere of emotion, stillness, and quiet revelation.
Opening Date: Friday, July 4, 2025
Time: 5:00 PM
Venue: Bikalpa Art Center, Lalitpur
Open to the public
Gallery Hours: 10:00 AM- 6:00 PM
About the Artist:
Anne Mai Baan is a visual artist currently based in Kathmandu. She works with analogue photography, visual journalling and writing. Growing up in different countries – and therefore without firm roots – artistic expression has always been a means for her to ground herself in external and internal landscapes. Words, lines and the decisive shutter of the camera function as tools to pause (in) time, capture impressions, and change perspectives. Her works explore the intimacy of human interaction, celebrate the beauty of the everyday, encourage joy in attention to details, and invite participation in a daily love letter to life.
Artist statement:
Exposure/36 is a photographic love letter to life.
This project takes inspiration from the dual meaning of “exposure”—as both a photographic process and a personal experience. It presents 36 frames of an analogue film roll as 36 opportunities to reveal what shapes and affects us. The “/” acts as a poetic pause—an invitation to stop, observe, and experience more deeply.
Working exclusively with analogue photography allows me to slow down, to shift my perspective and to pause time in an otherwise relentless and fast-paced world. I am drawn to the decisiveness of the camera shutter, how its clear-cut sound represents a concrete and irreversible decision to catch that which has caught me.
For me the act of photography is a choice for presence and new perspective. The finite nature of a single film roll, with its 36 exposures, demands certainty and acceptance. The moments and impressions I distill in a single frame simultaneously imprint themselves on my memory and mind's eye. In turn, even just the weight of the analogue camera intensifies my lens on and experience of the world. I am drawn to the unpredictability of film, and delight in the lack of control I have over the outcome. It reorients my focus from perfection to presence, shifting my attention towards the quality with which I showed up to the moment of capture rather than the final image. The camera never replaces my experience, but deeply enriches and transforms it.
Almost exactly 10 years ago, I was handed my first analogue camera by a stranger in Melbourne Central Library. It had once belonged to his mother, and he passed it to me with the request, “I have taken it to Canada, New Zealand and Australia and now I want you to take it everywhere you go.” The exposures selected for this exhibition cover some of the countless countries that this camera has accompanied me to from that moment onwards: Malta, the Netherlands, Germany, Bulgaria, Spain, Greece, Italy, Serbia, Australia, various parts of Nepal.
The photographs are unedited and uncorrected, left untouched, consciously including the natural damages and light-leaks from the film development. In this way, each image carries the marks of the process—chance, imperfection, a visual representation of letting go of control. These qualities are part of what makes each photograph unique.
At the heart of Exposure/36 is joy.
Each photograph in this collection is tied to a moment that made me laugh, love, or simply pause to appreciate the world. Photography, for me, is a reminder that we do not need a lens to pause and notice the details around us. My hope is that these photographs encourage you to look with humor and openness, to embrace the small daily opportunities for perspective shifts—whether through unexpected geometry, awe-inspiring nature, complementary colors, street encounters and human connections or compositions that are simply perfect in their imperfection.
