When curator Suvendu Chatterjee congratulates all the women who have had the courage to fight back gender and state violence, he is bang on the button. He says in the booklet, “I grieve the absence of images by women photographers” in the Drik India exhibition at Gorky Sadan (November 29-December 4).

That documented work and whiplashed truths can take in the creative eye as well was evident in the monochromes of Suvendu Chatterjee like that of Irom Sharmila Chanu fasting in protest against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Manipur.

There was also Shantanu Mukherjee’s colour photofeature on Fatima from Bangladesh with troubling captions.

Aesthetics while capturing atrocities was evident in Bijoy Chowdhury’s series on women and girls labouring in brickfields and Sohrab Hura’s series on women working at stone crushing or at a pottery unit.

But the most striking example of blending photo journalism and high art was Ratan Luwangcha’s colour shot of the aftermath of Manorama killing by state machinery in Manipur: scores of chappals strewn in the foreground and a flank of mostly women moving away in the background.