Naveen Kishore

Naveen Kishore (b. 1953) is a photographer who has extensively documented men performing female roles in Manipuri, Bengali, and Punjabi theatre practices. In one of his most renowned projects to date, Performing the Goddess: Chapal Bhaduri’s Story (1999), Kishore photographed and filmed Chapal Bhaduri, an iconic performer of jatra (Bengali folk theatre), known for his impersonation of women, until women started playing female roles in the jatra in the 1970s. Kishore’s film generated a new interest in Bhaduri in a time when discourse regarding queer and gendered identities was emerging. He completed a BA in English Literature from St. Xavier’s College in 1973, and began working as a theatre lighting designer. He established the prestigious Seagull Books in 1982, a publishing programme in arts and media which focuses on drama, film, art, and cultural studies. Today, Seagull Books produces poetry and fiction, and owns the English-language publishing rights for books by such prestigious authors as Theodor Adorno, Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Bernhard, Imre Kertész, Yves Bonnefoy, Mo Yan, Mahasweta Devi, Peter Handke, and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, among many others. Kishore founded The Seagull Foundation for the Arts in 1987 and the Seagull School of Publishing in 2012. He is the recipient of Germany’s prestigious Goethe Medal and the France’s Chevalier Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.