Homegrown Year-End Round-Up: Our 10 Best Stories on Photography In 2014

'Tis the season to be retrospective. The clock's ticking on this year, and as we race to the next, we take out a moment to thematically round up some of the pieces we worked on over 2014, a little something to remember it by.

Over the course of the year, we curated the works of some legends of photography as well as some newer names that have taken to their lenses, exploring their voices and chronicling the world around them uniquely. With themes spanning the spectrum, we also moved into a really interesting sphere with the No Country for Women campaign, which involved reaching out to photographers to interpret the theme 'Gendered Spaces' - delving into a woman's right to be present in a public place, a complex issue rooted in socio-cultural beliefs that they each had their own resounding take on, with the different perspectives and the range of visual vocabulary making for an absorbing collection of photographs.

2014 really pushed us to explore more of what it was about photography that was exciting, and riveting, and the thunderous impact that it can have in a narrative.

Here's a quick round-up of Homegrown's photography-related highlights from the year, just in case you missed it:

I. 12 Indian Photographers Capture How Differently Men & Women Interact With Public Spaces In Our Country

The gendered negotiation of space in India

II. Documenting Tea Culture: The Chaiwallahs Of India

An integral part of the rhythm of life, from the deserts of Rajasthan to the seaside megacity of Mumbai to the call centres and factories driving India’s economic rise,’

III. #Hokkolorob: Two Weeks In,The Massive Student Protest Persists

IV. Photostory: Ronny Sen’s Khmer Din Is A Silent Exploration Of The Darkness Within

“Khmer Din is a visual representation of my disconnected memories. The project started at a time when I was bored with photography and had not been taking pictures for a while, and since taking pictures is all I have ever known as a creative outlet, I was suffocating.”

V. Photo Narrative: Prabuddha Dasgupta’s ‘Urban Women’ Disregards Stereotypes

“Indian women as subjects of photographic representation have never been seen as anything other than exotic models of attractiveness… its current avatar being the one dimensional Bollywood stereotype. And that, ironically in an age where women’s accomplishments in practically every arena have far surpassed their male counterparts. These are portraits of urban Indian women, selected for their interestingness rather than their physical charms, drawn from a variety of disciplines, sometimes conforming to gender stereotypes and sometimes defying them.”

VI.  Voyeur: 10 Photographers’ Instagram Accounts You Need To Follow Today

VII. These 7 Incredible Wildlife Photographers Are Some Of India’s Best

VIII. Right As Rain: Steve McCurry’s View Of The Indian Monsoons

IX. Photo Story: Anurag Banerjee’s I’m Not Here Project Is Unbelievably Beautiful

 It takes extraordinary depth of being to translate raw emotion through a picture and Anurag Banerjee is one of the rare few who seems to have made the crossover successfully. In this particular project, ‘I’m Not Here,’ Banerjee perfectly encapsulates the bewildering feeling of going back to the place that you once called home, only to feel as though you never lived there at all. At the end of it all, we’re left with a sense of hiding in plain sight, as he empties his frames of specifics, allowing his theme to tie up the loose ends.

X. Young Indian Photographers You Should Know

Homegrown handpicked seven young contemporary photographers, who are steadily outshining the others with their individual style and their need to extract more from the art.