My starting point is the phenomenal upsurge of violence now seen in all walks of our emotional, social and political life. I try to come to terms with the insidious and unrecognized forms of our brutalisation, the degradation of the sense of life and honour within ourselves as well as in others. My work, however you would chose to describe this confluence of photography, painting, theatre and literature, has grown in the shadow of political violence in the last decade in my home state of Punjab.
As a result of what I have had to witness of human suffering in the spate of incessant killing and counter killing I have tried to communicate the collapse fo our sensitivities in all the theatres of violence; in Afghanistan, Jammu and Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Bosnia and Chechnya etc. I am not merely interested in presenting images of the destruction of human goodness, courage and beauty, but I try to tap the unsuspected and as yet unrealized sources of tenderness, fortitude and humanity.
For example, I use the crumbling wall in Raj Jain’s painting to work out my vision of human tragedy through the terror stricken women and children. The human figures, through their gestures, exclamations and movements, embody my stirrings of horror as the still small voice within us grows stiller and smaller.

Diwan Manna