Provoke Publishing

11/09/2025

拆 [chāi] — to demolish, dismantle, destroy. In Shanghai, the ideogram is a death sentence written on walls: soon this house, this alley, this courtyard will vanish.

Leticia Lampert’s book doesn’t just document the ruins — it stages them. Each pockmarked wall, half-torn curtain, abandoned teacup becomes an invitation to invent. These aren’t ruins as tragedy, they are ruins as stage directions: here, imagine a life.

That’s what I love about books like this: they refuse to let demolition be the last word. Instead, they let memory (and fiction) colonize the wreckage.

Sparseeing works in the same spirit. It’s not an archive that says “look what was.” It’s an invitation: “tell me what could have been.” Because even when the city clears the lot and builds something new, we get to keep walking through the ghost architecture we made up in our heads.

Maybe the real act of preservation isn’t saving the building — it’s refusing to stop telling stories about it.

Courtesy: .lampert

02/09/2025

Autobiography of a Rolliflex:

I was born in Braunschweig, 1953 — twin lenses, square gaze, waist-level charm. Don’t call me vintage, darling, call me timeless. While the Leicas ran around like boys showing off, I stood taller, slower, more deliberate. I don’t chase moments, I seduce them.

I’ve been carried through wars and weddings, stared at generals and grandmothers with the same calm face. I’ve been caressed by artists, dropped by amateurs, and once abandoned in a darkroom like a lover who deserved better.

Twelve frames at a time, I demanded attention. No spray-and-pray, no easy shortcuts. With me, every click was a contract: commit or don’t bother.

Now I rest on a shelf, hips wide, body square, heavy with secrets. But I still smell of leather and fixer, and I still remember every gaze that passed through me.

And if sparseeing is a story about memory, fiction, and the fragile archive of our lives — then maybe I’ve been its ghostwriter all along.

15/07/2025

Posted • I SPEAK IN BIRDSONG: I found a shy little who could whistle. He imitated bird sounds using just his hands placed in complicated ways around his mouth. He wanted to be a bird. Maybe. There’s something about the and soaring birds.

He passed me by pretending as though I hadn’t caught him in on his secret. One that he shared with only the birds. I followed him down the hill to his mother’s tea shop. I went out in desperation to grab a few . Bribing was now the only option.

As I returned, I came back only to find, the boy sitting across the table from me. He wouldn’t meet my eyes-one of his looked past me, the other off to the side, and yet I could feel him watching, somehow.
He gave one more sound, long and stretched -a hawk’s cry, like it had flown far to get here and lost something on the way.

He finally did come along to letting me record his secret on my phone camera , but was extremely hesitant at first. But us now being in his mother’s canteen helped me ease into the situation. It was his safe place he finally sang and it was .

27/09/2024

08/09/2023

Think: the sound of splashing and giggles as the cousins get together for a dip in the makeshift pool behind the garden patch of our childhood home, of a summer rain slanted against some beloved attic's cooling roof, of a childhood photograph rediscovered in a faded frame.
It's the sound of our grandparents' house in Bistupur which would brim with warmth when Mehr and I found respite from our travels, and caught up with her sisters Perin and Kothy. Mamla was always there. Grand-old-man was on his shipping tours around the works.

• Sparsee-ing • The Verb • Doing Word • In process •

With Abhishek Basu Joyona Medhi

28/01/2023

28/01/2023

"Make the book unheroic", said Mr Bharucha’s ghost, with the hills of the yet-to-be-built industrial township of Jamshedpur, serving as backdrop behind him.
The diary was held close by Mr K M Bharucha in his travels far and wide. They are bits and pieces of what he chose to prefreeze, how he chose to remember. Steeped in personhood, the diary traces the journey of a man's becoming, of his envisioning. While the diary of Mr Bharucha is a book that could have been subject to an infinite number of rearrangements still, the strength of the “arrangement" lies in its courage: the courage of a lone man with a camera to put something out into the world, in print; something confounding and generous in equal measure. Confounding in it's discreetness. Generous in his invitation to tell the story of human endeavour.

A day in the diary of Mr Bharucha.

From our upcoming (SPARSEEING) with the help of

28/01/2023

Posted • CALL FOR ENTRIES
Photobook Grant 2023

The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts is pleased to announce its annual call for submissions - The Photobook Grant, inviting works from across South Asia.

We are looking for an exceptionally manifested photo-narrative, inviting book projects that explore how meanings are constructively shaped by image interactions/juxtapositions. We hope to receive proposals that display inventive and innovative means through personal language and form, shaped by regional specificities and/or local histories.

Jury
Iftikhar Dadi: Faculty, History of Art, Cornell University
Jyoti Dhar: Art Critic and Editor
Lukas Birk: Photographer, Researcher and Publisher

Submission deadline: 30 March 2023

Grant: INR 4 lakhs

For further information on terms, kindly check the link in bio.

.birk .katragadda

25/08/2022

So this happened!

Joyona Medhi shared a post on Instagram: "So, this happened! Thank you all for your support and best wishes. Fiction can allow us brief residence in the land of true ambiguity, where we really don’t know what the hell to think. We can’t stay there very long. It’s not in our nature. You can be ...

21/03/2022

A peak behind the scenes of the making of the photobook SPARSEE-ing. Have a look. Also,

Provoke shared a video on Instagram: “Navroz Mubarak ” • See 18 photos and videos on their profile.

27/11/2021

Posted • Fresh off the press. will be physically present at the opening tomorrow .live from 4:00pm onwards.

23/11/2021

The supplement or The Ad-let, as its cover screamed out, was eye-grabbing with its matted pages, full bleeds—reminding me a lot of the of times of the Madison Avenue hype. It had been long since I chanced upon a curated set of vintage , I thought to myself. Maybe I should add it to my bulletin on Pinterest. However, my eyebrows couldn't help but rise when I see unposed, documentary pictures, juxtaposed with fictional brand names! From Red Apple Ci******es, a brand I've often noticed in Tarantino's fictional world, to fake brands like F**ks(sic) and Souls for Soles, instead of the typical Fcuks and Soles for Souls, it was great for once to see the real, the lived and the crazy of a people like us, being vouched for by these giants we usually find relegated to glossy magazines. The stories and snippets to go as ad copy were as weird as they were thought provoking.

—Testimonials from a dear someone who chanced upon The Provoke Ad-let. Grab your own copies which will be up for sale at .live this 27th and 28th! The pop up hosted by with artists like and even a live performance by promises a good time. Be there.