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Medium and Narrative: On Kalkimanthankatha

Adreeta Chakraborty Jan 19, 2024

Filmed on 16mm for daylight shots and digital for nighttime, Ashish Avikunthak’s Kalkimanthankatha (2015) undertakes an experiment with hybridity that works well to magnify and formally replicate the metaphysical conflict of Kalki’s (and Godot’s) materiality—of being and not being.

Texts and Contexts: Revisiting Kalkimanthankatha

Adreeta Chakraborty Jan 18, 2024

In Kalkimanthankatha (2015), Ashish Avikunthak pitches his thesis upon a motley triad: Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1949), the iconic absurdist narrative of postmodern disorientation; Mao Tse-Tung’s Little Red Book, a resounding champion of agential modernity; and the premodern spiritual landscape that is the Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad.

Breaking the Cycle: On the Spirit of Youth Movements

Aishwarya Baidar Oct 03, 2024

Premiered at Hot Docs 2024 and screened at Sheffield Film Festival 2024, the 117-minute documentary focuses on the social and political turmoil in Thailand under the military junta that seized power through a coup d'état in 2014.

A Satire of Patriarchy: Examining Kathal - A Jackfruit Mystery

Akash Sarraf Aug 12, 2024

Kathal - A Jackfruit Mystery (2023), directed by Yashowardhan Mishra, stars Sanya Malhotra as inspector Mahima Basoor in the hinterland of the Bundelkhand region in north and central India. The film offers a satirical take on the nature of bureaucracy, politics and the police procedural through its insipid and dry humour.

Goodbye South, Goodbye: Taiwanese Youth’s Fractured Identity and Cultural Detachment

Akash Sarraf Jul 16, 2024

This essay examines contemporary Taiwanese youth's disconnectedness from its culture and politics and reflects upon how Hou Hsiao-hsien’s compositional aesthetics render this estrangement through distinct techniques and vocabularies.

A City of Sadness: Hou Hsiao-hsien On Post-War Taiwan

Akash Sarraf Jul 15, 2024

A leading figure in the Taiwanese film scene, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s films offer a nuanced representation of Taiwan’s complex, sweeping history.

Mani Ratnam’s Bombay: The Politics of Censorship and Stereotyping

Akash Sarraf Jun 15, 2024

The essay examines how Bombay (1995) constitutes negative stereotypes against Muslims through their strategic placement in various segments and careful machinations of the narrative, along with the politics of censorship, which allow for alterations in the narrative to result in far-reaching consequences than initially intended.

Cinematic Apparatus as Altering Reality: Partition, Communalism and Gender in Bombay

Akash Sarraf Jun 14, 2024

The cinematic apparatus theory suggests that films are deeply embedded with ideological and psychological implications that try to reinforce certain beliefs and promote ideas. Mani Ratnam's Bombay (1995), in that sense, aims to present a constructed reality through orchestrated gazes, edits, camerawork and an emotionally charged narrative.

The Nepali Art Scene: In Conversation with Swosti Rajbhandari Kayastha

Alfa M Shakya Sep 16, 2024

In this edited conversation with Alfa M. Shakya, Swosti Rajbhandari Kayastha, the curator of the Nepal Art Council (NAC), discusses the recent Deities of Nepal II exhibition held during May–June 2024 and provides an overview of the Nepali art scene in the last decade.

Glitch Art: Dismantling Code Structures

Anisha Baid Sep 30, 2022

Since the early 2000s, artists, musicians and technologists have been engaged in exploring and exploiting the aesthetic and theoretical possibilities of the digital glitch.

On Biometric Data Collection: In Conversation with Karthik KG

Anisha Baid Sep 27, 2022

In this continuing conversation with media artist and researcher Karthik KG, we discuss the artist’s various projects as well as his research around biometric data collection.

The Algorithmic Image: In Conversation with Karthik KG

Anisha Baid Sep 26, 2022

In this first of a two-part conversation, we delve into Karthik KG's process and consider the implications of algorithmic culture on contemporary image making.

Schizophrenic Photography: An Interview with Abdul Halik Azeez

Anisha Baid Sep 21, 2022

In this continuing conversation with Abdul Halik Azeez, he elaborates on how his visual practice involves a spontaneous engagement with and recording of the world around him.

Photographing on the Network: An Interview with Abdul Halik Azeez

Anisha Baid Sep 20, 2022

In this conversation, Abdul Halik Azeez highlights the transition of the image sharing network from one being open to experimental photographic practice, to the more commercialised and personality-centric space it presents itself as today.

New Ways of Moving Forward: A Conversation with Brendan Fernandes

Anisha Baid Oct 07, 2021

In this first of a two-part interview with Brendan Fernandes, we discuss his practice as well as the impact of the present conditions of social isolation and increasing digital programming on his work.

Digital Witnessing: Devika Mohan’s Screenshot Photographs of 9/11

Anisha Baid Jul 03, 2021

As an artist and designer, Devika Mohan works with digital images ranging from collages to found photography and experiments with digital photography.

Resisting the Algorithm: Tara Kelton’s Guided Tour

Anisha Baid Jun 19, 2021

Guided Tour is a series of videos by Tara Kelton, made with screenshots of popular tourist sites in India taken from the Street View feature on Google Maps.

Cinema’s Original Illusion: Savinder Bual’s Mechanical Animations

Anisha Baid May 23, 2021

Savinder Bual’s work investigates the still and moving image using unusual and everyday objects as well as special hand-crafted mechanisms.

A History of Light and Shadow: On Cameraless Photography

Anisha Baid May 12, 2021

In his publication Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph, Geoffrey Batchen traces the unique and often overlooked history of cameraless photography.

Towards a Textured Counter-Visuality: In Conversation with the Exhausted Geographies Team

Anisha Baid May 04, 2021

In this continuing conversation around Exhausted Geographies—a Karachi-based collaborative publishing practice by Abeera Kamran, Shahana Rajani and Zahra Malkani—we talk about the accompanying web project of struggle.

The Violence of Cartography: In Conversation with the Exhausted Geographies Team

Anisha Baid May 03, 2021

In the second part of a continuing conversation with the Exhausted Geographies team, we reflect on the historically fraught process of map-making and the various methods artists use to subvert histories of violence and state power.

Exhausted Geographies of Karachi: In Conversation with Abeera Kamran, Shahana Rajani and Zahra Malkani

Anisha Baid May 02, 2021

Exhausted Geographies is a Karachi-based collaborative publishing practice by Abeera Kamran, Shahana Rajani and Zahra Malkani.

Resolution, Information and Memes: In Defence of the Poor Image

Anisha Baid Apr 07, 2021

Hito Steyerl, a German filmmaker, moving image artist and theorist, has written extensively about the dissemination of media artefacts in the contemporary technological landscape.

Fabricating the Documentary Image: Shubham Kumar’s Negotiations with Violence and Representation

Anisha Baid Apr 05, 2021

Shubham Kumar is an artist from Gaya, Bihar. His practice explores the dialogue between image making and histories of violence through material engagements with painting and photography.

Making of a Local Icon: Indu Antony’s Feminist Public Art Project Cecilia’ed

Anisha Baid Apr 02, 2021

Cecilia’ed, a multifaceted public art project by Indu Antony, manifested as a year-long programme of community events around the concerns of women’s safety in urban India.

Charting Intimacies Online: In Conversation with Chandan Gomes

Anisha Baid Mar 24, 2021

People You May Know is a photo essay comprised of images from an online exchange the photographer Chandan Gomes had with a stranger named Tara Banerjee.

Between Documentary and Speculative: An Interview with Subash Thebe Limbu

Anisha Baid Mar 17, 2021

In this continuing conversation with artist Subash Thebe Limbu, we explore the various material and mediatic negotiations involved in the movement of Indigenous Futurisms.

Towards an Adivasi Futurism: An Interview with Subash Thebe Limbu

Anisha Baid Mar 16, 2021

Subash Thebe Limbu is a Nepalese indigenous artist who works with sound, film, performance and painting.

Reframing Generic Images: Old Indian Photos by Nihaal Faizal

Anisha Baid Mar 09, 2021

Nihaal Faizal works around the idea of the copy, reflecting upon media documents from popular and cultural memory.

Investigating the Digital Image

Anisha Baid Mar 03, 2021

The digital image is often said to present a break in the continuous flow of media—from painting, to the printed image, to photography, cinema and television.

Authorship, Dispersion and the Digital Image

Anisha Baid Mar 03, 2021

Digital images allow for endless iterations or copies to be produced without a necessary loss in quality.

Both Poison and Cure: Christopher Pinney’s Seven Theses on Photography

Anisha Baid Mar 02, 2021

The field of photography remains a fertile ground for building frameworks to understand contemporary image cultures within the histories and socio-political contexts that produce them.

On a World-System Photography: Christopher Pinney's Seven Theses on Photography

Anisha Baid Mar 01, 2021

While thinking about photography continues to proliferate and explore new territories of public life and social history, one often struggles to find a unified “theory” of photography in contemporary times.

Everyday Images: Geoffrey Batchen's “Vernacular Photographies”

Anisha Baid Feb 25, 2021

Vernacular photography refers to those everyday practices of image-making that occupy the realm of the domestic and the intimate rather than the monumental, historic and avant-garde.

Self as Other: The Cinematic Space of Kiran Subbaiah

Anisha Baid Feb 22, 2021

Kiran Subbaiah’s oeuvre, evolving through diverse media forms—from sculptural to interactive websites and video installations—is often overlooked in the writing of India’s contemporary art history.

Material Inversals: The Works of Kiran Subbaiah

Anisha Baid Feb 22, 2021

Looking through Kiran Subbaiah's archive online, one finds many premonitions of his retreat. A short story titled The Genius’s Renunciation recounts the tale of a scientist, who, through rigorous study, comes to the conclusion that the only solution to humanity’s problems lies in altering human DNA.

Photography as Journal: An Interview with Ashfika Rahman

Anisha Baid Feb 20, 2021

In this conversation, Rahman emphasises the potential for photography to be more than benign documentation, by becoming an activator and catalyst for social change.

Expanding the Documentary: In Conversation with Ashfika Rahman

Anisha Baid Feb 19, 2021

In the first episode of this two-part interview, we delve into Ashfika Rahman's process as a documentary photographer and as an artist, examining the shifting boundaries between these modalities of practice.

The First Women of the Institution: Homai Vyarawalla’s Photographs of Early Women’s Colleges in India

Anisha Baid Feb 13, 2021

Homai Vyarawalla, who also operated under the pseudonym Dalda 13, is widely known as India’s first woman press photographer.

Finding Archives Where There Are None: Documenting a Displaced Existence in the Forests of Chitwan

Anisha Baid Feb 10, 2021

As an online presentation of sustained anthropological and photographic research, the website provokes the documentary modality, weaving together the various social realities of a wounded landscape.

The Agrarian Revolution and Tina Modotti: In Conversation with Dr Savitri Sawhney

Anisha Baid Feb 09, 2021

In this continuing conversation with Savitri Sawhney, we dwell on Pandurang Khankhoje’s work as an agrarian–responsible for the establishment of more than thirty free agricultural schools in Mexico.

A Transnational Revolutionary: Dr Savitri Sawhney on her father Pandurang Khankhoje

Anisha Baid Jan 19, 2021

Pandurang Khankhoje’s work at the agricultural school in Mexico is survived by many photographs taken by the celebrated photographer Tina Modotti.

Staging a Film: Stills from Tagore’s Natir Puja

Ankan Kazi Aug 16, 2024

In 1931, Rabindranath Tagore filmed a version of his stage drama Natir Puja (A Dancer’s Worship) for B.N. Sircar’s New Theatres studio in erstwhile Calcutta. It recounted the tale of a court dancer Sreemati, who sacrificed herself at the altar of Buddha after his religious philosophy was censured by King Ajatasatru.

A Visual Voyage: NFDC's History of Indian Cinema

Ankan Kazi Jun 11, 2024

Published by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Indian Cinema: A Visual Voyage (1998) aims to provide the Indian state’s version of the historical narrative of cinema in India.

On Broken Ground: Early Short Films by Nina Sugati SR

Ankan Kazi May 22, 2024

Together with her other short films, these bold formal experiments laid the ground for a nascent experimental film aesthetic that would try to define India as a site of anticolonial politics across the world.

Creating the Imageograph: Nina Sugati SR and the Counter-Cultural Image

Ankan Kazi May 21, 2024

Nina Sugati SR's participation in dialogues at the Vision Exchange Workshop, organised by Akbar Padamsee in Bombay between 1969 and 1972, led to her conception of the “Imageograph,” which was a compound of the moving image invested with photography’s access to the human spirit.

Still and Moving Image Experiments: Photography and the Films Division

Ankan Kazi Apr 23, 2024

The films discussed present the different idioms of experimentation and mediation of the still, photographic image and technique as it intersperses with the moving image.

Women in the Emergency: Socialist India and the Depiction of Women

Ankan Kazi Apr 18, 2024

Gemma Scott explores the role of photographs in the Emergency that sought to mobilise women’s support for Indira Gandhi, her party and the state’s repressive measures, which were repeatedly justified as having been undertaken to protect the rights of “minorities” in the country.

Partitioned Cinemas: Salma Siddique’s Evacuee Cinema

Ankan Kazi Jan 04, 2024

Evacuee Cinema: Bombay and Lahore in Partition Transit, 1940–1960 by Salma Siddique explores the creative energies, production and subsequent circulation of popular cinema to offer fresh insights into partition, especially as it affected a range of common film personnel in both of those cities.

Butchering the Real: Kelzang Dorjee’s Why is the Sky Dark at Night?

Ankan Kazi Dec 07, 2023

Kelzang Dorjee’s independent short film Why is the Sky Dark at Night? (2021) represents a flowering of independent cinema in Bhutan over the last decade as filmmakers continue to search for themes, patronage and audiences that can allow film cultures in the Himalayan country to move beyond the heavy-handed influence of Indian and world cinema.

Visions of Development: Planning the New Documentary

Ankan Kazi Dec 01, 2023

Visions of Development: Films Division of India and the Imagination of Progress, 1948–75 (2016) by Peter Sutoris situates the aesthetics of progress, planning and other developmental activities across films produced by the Films Division (FD) of India.

Narrativising the Nation: Visions of Development by Peter Sutoris

Ankan Kazi Nov 29, 2023

Peter Sutoris’ book Visions of Development: Films Division of India and the Imagination of Progress, 1948–75 (2016) is a historical account of the films produced by the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s Films Division (FD).

Images of the Family: Sohail Akbar’s Photo Album

Ankan Kazi Oct 30, 2023

Sohail Akbar’s essay “Modern Sensibilities: An Exploration of the Early History of the Nation through Personal Photographs” (2014), attempts to grapple with national historical accounts through the categories of affect, sensibility and perception, as revealed in his own family albums.

Erasing the Past: Photography in the Archive and the Work of Imran Channa

Ankan Kazi Oct 17, 2023

Channa’s work interrogates the nature of photography and its claim as a medium, especially a transparent one, which can communicate perfect historical knowledge to the present.

Following the Rhino: On Sahil Naik’s Karkadann of Land and the Dark Seas

Ankan Kazi Oct 13, 2023

Karkadann of Land and the Dark Seas seeks to investigate architecture as “witness” as well as “evidence”—including the symbolic structures adopted by myths as they seek to enter the domain of history.

Resisting the Image: The FTII Protests in Kshama Padalkar’s The Strike and I

Ankan Kazi Sep 13, 2023

Kshama Padalkar’s film The Strike and I (2019) documents the filmmaker’s close encounter with the historic Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) strikes of 2015.

Postcolonial Histories of Science: On The Gold of a Yellow Plant

Ankan Kazi Jul 26, 2023

The film uses archival photographs, animation and a haunting soundtrack to present the revolutionary careers of three agronomist-activists—Nikolai Vavilov, Amílcar Cabral and Pandurang Khankhoje—whose work effortlessly upended the political norms of their time.

A Very Old Machine: On Jahnavi Phalkey’s Cyclotron

Ankan Kazi Jul 24, 2023

The arrival of a pre-used cyclotron in a “regional”, North Indian university is critically framed by Phalkey in her film Cyclotron (2020) as the conduit for various interwoven narratives of political and social transformations

Mobilising the Camera: Short Films Curated by Vikalp@Prithvi

Ankan Kazi Jun 27, 2023

The films are primarily offered in the form of dialogic provocations—an invitation to engage in debate and broaden the terms by which regional politics across India get translated into national issues and discourses.

The Exemplary Intellectual: On Akshay Indikar’s Udaharanarth Nemade

Ankan Kazi Jun 19, 2023

Akshay Indikar’s documentary Udaharanarth Nemade (For Example, Nemade, 2016) mixes fiction, reportage and interviews to present a largely adulatory portrait of the Jnanpith Award-winning Marathi writer and critic, Bhalchandra Nemade.

On Collective Documentary Practices: Ektara Collective’s Ek Jagah Apni

Ankan Kazi Apr 08, 2023

The film resurrects debates around filmmaking collectives at the level of decentralised production and at an allegorical level, where the collectivist spirit leaves a mark on the narrative of the film.

Ways Out of Auteurism: The Fate of Filmmaking Collectives

Ankan Kazi Apr 07, 2023

In the popular consciousness of film audiences, the regime of studio-era productions—where the authorship of decision-making was controlled by producers and directors—was followed by the era of auteurism.

Archiving Collectives: Asia Art Archive’s Inter-Archive Conversations

Ankan Kazi Feb 23, 2023

The normative archive that is understood to feed into mainstream narratives about “regional” or postcolonial locations, throws up many critical problems about history-making.

Decolonizing German Television: The Fifth Wall and the Media Legacy of Navina Sundaram

Ankan Kazi Dec 14, 2022

Earlier this year, the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation (SSAF) organised a panel discussion on The Fifth Wall, a digital archive of the television programmes and documentary films by Navina Sundaram.

Seeing through Censorship: Wakilur Rahman’s Censored Image

Ankan Kazi Dec 01, 2022

For photographer and artist Wakilur Rahman, censorship in Bangladesh is born of the conflict between individual expression and the state’s control of knowledge.

Under the Skin: On Madhuja Mukherjee’s Deep6

Ankan Kazi Oct 12, 2022

Despite employing the conventional narrative of a soul-searching protagonist, Madhuja Mukherjee brings to the film her close awareness of formal details, rendering it a rich multimedia experience for the viewer.

Watching British India: On Sandhya Suri’s Around India with a Movie Camera

Ankan Kazi Oct 07, 2022

Sandhya Suri’s second documentary feature Around India with a Movie Camera (2018) presents an album of moving images that provide a taste of the range of non-fiction films made by the British (and some French) filmmakers.

Curating the (Asian) Contemporary: On the Second Tushar Joag Memorial Lecture delivered by Zoe Butt

Ankan Kazi Sep 22, 2022

Speaking at the second Tushar Joag Memorial Lecture held in March, 2022, Zoe Butt’s lecture presentation was titled “Finding mentors and confidantes within the slippage of what is visible or presumed absent”, and was chaired by Chaitanya Sambrani.

Lost Days: On Ekta Mittal’s Gumnaam Din

Ankan Kazi Sep 15, 2022

Outside the stream of data and hypervisible melodramas that frame the stories of migrant labour in India, Gumnaam Din attempts to restore some dignity to their narratives of searching and failure, even as they are haunted by the spectre of disappearance.

Fear of the Fragment: On Vipin Vijay’s small-scale societies

Ankan Kazi Sep 12, 2022

Vipin Vijay's video work small-scale societies confronts the scale of civilizational narratives through the defiant partiality of fragments.

Creation Myths: On Vipin Vijay’s Anthropocene Relooked

Ankan Kazi Sep 08, 2022

The big questions about civilizational beginnings and their difficult existence in our besieged contemporary moment find a clearer statement of purpose in Vipin Vijay's documentary essay.

Sculpting time: Arun Ganguly’s photographs of Meera Mukherjee

Ankan Kazi Sep 07, 2022

Galerie 88’s centenary tribute to the sculptor Meera Mukherjee featured an exhibition of photographs taken by Arun Ganguly—curated by Adip Dutta and Tapati Guha-Thakurta.

Gardeners in the Wasteland: On Ishaan Ghose’s Jhilli (Discards)

Ankan Kazi Sep 05, 2022

Ishaan Ghose’s film unveils a delirious and slurred narrative of a group of friends who drift in and out of each other’s lives as they attempt to make a living from Dhapa, or dream-up hare-brained schemes of escape that are doomed to failure.

Amorar Akhyan: Dilara Begum Jolly’s Tales of the Undead

Ankan Kazi Sep 01, 2022

Dilara Begum Jolly's film Amorar Akhyan lies at the cusp of performance and video art, where both forms are utilised to arrive at a more poetic rendering of a haunted space in national memory.

Virtual Memories: On Suneil Sanzgiri's Letter From Your Far-off Country

Ankan Kazi Aug 29, 2022

Suneil Sanzgiri’s experimental film essay Letter From Your Far-off Country, assumes the shape of an epistolary meditation and dialogue on the growing threats to Indian democracy over the last few years, and its threatening attempts to eclipse the radical pasts of the country.

Projecting the Gaze: A Conversation with Sibi Sekar

Ankan Kazi Aug 25, 2022

While Sibi Sekar’s short experimental feature You Are, I Am has been previously discussed, the filmmaker also spoke to Ankan Kazi about some of the influences underlying his work of developing a critical cinematic gaze to refuse the normative framework of the visual pleasure in looking.

Alternating Currents: On Writing with Fire

Ankan Kazi Aug 01, 2022

Writing with Fire focuses on a crucial moment of transition as Khabar Lahariya prepares to “go digital” after 2016. Harnessing technological change requires a complex negotiation between social capital, access and educational privilege—and these rural reporters are occasionally taught by city-based feminists about such crucial changes—all of which is on powerful display in the film’s narrative.

Hypnotic States: On Sibi Sekar’s you are, i am

Ankan Kazi Jul 11, 2022

Sekar’s experimental videos have frequently interrogated the complicity of film’s notoriously patriarchal modes of gazing with constructions of romantic imagery.

History’s Promise: On Suneil Sanzgiri’s At Home But Not At Home

Ankan Kazi Jun 27, 2022

The film attempts to piece together a narrative of identity-formation for the Goan diaspora that has been put through several traumatic upheavals during the mid-twentieth century anti-colonial movements.

Witnessing Us: On Hum Dekhenge, a Photo Document

Ankan Kazi Jun 21, 2022

Curated by Aasif Mujtaba and Mohammad Meharban, Hum Dekhenge features a collection of photographs taken during the anti-CAA protests that were organised in New Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh neighbourhood in late 2019.

The Artist as Medium: On Himmat Shah’s Acts of Creation

Ankan Kazi Apr 25, 2022

Shah’s work explores the possibilities of producing artistic objects by eradicating one’s subjectivity and rendering it open to the implications of a medium shaped by cultural history.

The Labour of Politics: Filming the Aftermath of a Political Victory in Kush Badhwar’s Work Starts Now

Ankan Kazi Mar 12, 2022

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi was founded by K. Chandrashekar Rao in 2001. He intended for it to be a political platform that could deliver the promise of a separate Telangana state.

Documenting Dalit Resistance: The Trajectory of Dalit Camera

Ankan Kazi Mar 09, 2022

Over the last decade, Dalit Camera has become a video-making institution and community media practice that foregrounds the problem of caste as it intersects with various other social barriers in India.

Teaching a New Art: Transitioning to the National College of Arts, Lahore

Ankan Kazi Mar 01, 2022

Following the Partition of British India and the concomitant birth of a new, bifurcated nation-state in 1947, Pakistan was warming up to the demand for a new agenda in the arts.

Fishing for Utopia: Dharmasena Pathiraja’s The Wasps are Here

Ankan Kazi Feb 28, 2022

Bambaru Avith looks at the impact of westernised, urban modernities as they encroach upon the lives of rural, isolated communities like the one shown in Kalpitiya, a small fishing village in north-western Sri Lanka.

Sacred Unveilings: Sepideh Farsi’s 7 Veils

Ankan Kazi Feb 27, 2022

In 7 Veils, Farsi carries a straightforward agenda, if the film needs to be reduced to one: that of peeling the layers of perceptual violence that afflicts a country, distorts its voices and manipulates its image for the world outside.

A Voyage in Time: Rajee Samarasinghe’s If I Were Any Further Away I’d Be Closer to Home

Ankan Kazi Feb 25, 2022

Rajee Samarasinghe is a Sri Lankan visual artist and filmmaker who left his island-country in 1998 at the age of ten, when the civil war was underway for about fifteen years already.

Relating to the World: Payal Kapadia’s The Last Mango Before the Monsoon

Ankan Kazi Oct 26, 2021

Payal Kapadia’s experimental narrative short The Last Mango Before the Monsoon (2014) describes a rich, textural experience of the losses entailed in our constant departures from the natural life of the world.

Learning to See: Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Afghan Alphabet

Ankan Kazi Sep 28, 2021

Mohsen Makhmalbaf shot Afghan Alphabet late in the year 2001 after Kandahar had been screened at the Cannes Film Festival and then across European and American theatres.

Desert of the Real: Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Kandahar

Ankan Kazi Sep 27, 2021

Safar-e Ghandehar (Kandahar, 2001) was shot in the borderlands of Iran and Afghanistan, using a semi-fictitious trope to represent the reality of the landscape.

Kabuliwallas of Kolkata: Memory, Nostalgia and Performance in the Life of a Community

Ankan Kazi Sep 20, 2021

Moska Najib and Nazes Afroz’s photographic project focuses on the evolving life of a community of travelling merchants in exile—the Kabuliwallas of Kolkata.

Facing the Earth: On Tareque Masud’s Adam Surat

Ankan Kazi Sep 16, 2021

Tareque Masud’s first film was a documentary that he shot over seven years in the environs of the decolonial painter Sheikh Mohammed Sultan’s home in Narail, in the Jessore district of Bangladesh.

Documenting Folk Performances: Prantik Basu’s Bela

Ankan Kazi Sep 10, 2021

Prantik Basu’s documentary Bela focuses on the performances of a troupe of Chhau dancers, called the Manbhum Sramjibi Chhau Nritya Dal.

Modelling an Image: Photographing the Bengali Actress

Ankan Kazi Sep 07, 2021

In her essay “Capturing Stars: Bengali Actresses Through the Camera of Nemai Ghosh,” Sabeena Gadihoke presents a range of contexts that influenced the images of women taken by photographers like Ghosh and filmmakers like Satyajit Ray.

The Clarity of Delirium: Avijit Mukul Kishore’s Squeeze Lime in Your Eye

Ankan Kazi Sep 04, 2021

Kaushik Mukhopadhyay seems to be invested in the performance of outsiderness and eccentricity, but is also equally committed to introducing notes of apocalyptic thinking, obsolescence and unfulfillment in the lives of the objects that he “invents” through finding, reworking and reappropriating.

Between Image and Text: Reading Malavika Karlekar’s History of Early Photography

Ankan Kazi Aug 27, 2021

Malavika Karlekar is a historian and anthropologist, specialising in nineteenth-century women’s histories in India, often with a focus on Bengal.

From Nudity to Obscenity: An Anecdote by Sunil Janah

Ankan Kazi Aug 05, 2021

In this continuing translation of an interview between Sunil Janah and Siddhartha Ghosh, we take a closer look at the eminently frustrating nature of state-bureaucracy with regard to process of intimate artistic creation.

Siddhartha Ghosh Interviews Sunil Janah: A Translation

Ankan Kazi Aug 04, 2021

The Bengali critic and historian of science and photography, Siddhartha Ghosh interviewed Sunil Janah on 23 March 1986. This is a translated excerpt from the interview.

Surveying the Settler: The Neighbour Before the House by Shaina Anand

Ankan Kazi Jul 29, 2021

Shaina Anand directed Al Jaar Qabla al Daar in which eight Palestinian families are provided with a controllable CCTV camera for a closer inspection of their neighbourhoods.

Birds in My Studio: Krishen Khanna’s Photographic Experiments

Ankan Kazi Jul 28, 2021

Krishen Khanna’s photographic practice was taken up to complement his holistic approach to the art of image-making.

The Lady and the Lion: Reading the Political Posters of Pakistan

Ankan Kazi Jun 11, 2021

The democracy decade (1988-99) in Pakistan presented a period of rich, visual experimentation with the language of politics in the public sphere.

Freedom on Screen: Bangladesh's Short Film as Alternative Cinema

Ankan Kazi Jun 08, 2021

The evolution of the short film form in Bangladesh reveals the traces of this struggle between filmmakers trying to wrest an autonomous form from the predations of state control.

Visible Work and Invisible Bodies: P. Sainath and the People’s Archive of Rural India

Ankan Kazi Jun 07, 2021

Palagummi Sainath’s continuing engagement with a specialised language of photographic practice—where the artist effaces himself by submitting to the expression of an eloquent but invisible world of work—drives the project of People’s Archive of Rural India.

The Propagandist and the Picturesque: Two Essays from Reverie and Reality

Ankan Kazi May 16, 2021

In this continuing discussion of Reverie and Reality, we focus on two essays by Sophie Gordon and Omar Khan which delve into the specific nature of a few photographic projects that are reflected in the Ehrenfeld collection.

Fact and Fiction: A Review of Reverie and Reality

Ankan Kazi May 15, 2021

Reverie and Reality is a catalogue of an exhibition held at San Francisco, from September 2003 to March 2004.

Conditions of Visibility: Reading R. Srivatsan’s Essays

Ankan Kazi May 07, 2021

The essays that make up the volume Conditions of Visibility (2000) form a set of related inquiries into the nature of contemporary image practices in complex inter-relationships with the growing consumer markets in India, state patronage and modernist aesthetics.

Advertising the Indian Real: Review of R. Srivatsan’s Conditions of Visibility

Ankan Kazi May 06, 2021

Along with Christopher Pinney’s Camera Indica, R. Srivatsan’s book Conditions of Visibility (2000) was one of the early critical treatments of the cultures of pre-digital photography in India.

Communities of Image-Making: On Sayeeda Khanam and Photojournalism

Ankan Kazi Apr 26, 2021

A magazine like Begum, with which Sayeeda Khanam was associated for over fifty years, should be seen as a spiraling index into the world of female, predominantly Muslim literary giants in Bengali.

Nationalist Cinemas of Bangladesh: A Discussion on John W. Hood’s The Bleeding Lotus

Ankan Kazi Apr 16, 2021

In this continuing discussion on John W. Hood’s The Bleeding Lotus, we focus on how his analysis foregrounds some of the important themes in Bangladesh’s nationalist cinema.

Notions of Nation: A Review of John W. Hood’s The Bleeding Lotus

Ankan Kazi Apr 15, 2021

John W. Hood’s book The Bleeding Lotus on the history of Bangladeshi nationalism on film is one of the few overviews on Bangladeshi cinema available in English.

On Absent-Minded Archives: Reading Photographs of Objects and Monuments

Ankan Kazi Mar 28, 2021

Based out of Kolkata, Vivek Das started taking photographs as early as the mid-1950s when he was a child, transitioning into the professional sphere as an advertising and commercial photographer in 1974.

Imperatives of Commercial Photography: Reading the Works of Vivek Das

Ankan Kazi Mar 27, 2021

The work of commercial photographers can provide access to discourses that are conventionally disregarded in critical and academic theories.

বাঙালির ঘরে ছবি

Ankan Kazi Mar 18, 2021

বাংলা ইতিহাসে প্রযুক্তি ও বিজ্ঞান চর্চার এক অন্যতম গবেষক ছিলেন সিদ্ধার্থ ঘোষ (১৯৪৮-২০০২)।

Conforming Vision: The Stereograph in Colonial India

Ankan Kazi Mar 15, 2021

In colonial South Asia, the stereoscopic photograph (or stereograph) was frequently produced and widely disseminated to encourage cultures of travelling.

“Unsteady Luminosity”: The Photograph in Modern Malayali Novels

Ankan Kazi Feb 26, 2021

For the Anglo-Indian community, as we saw in our earlier posts, the “lost original” symbolised a mythic search for a culturally homogenous identity that was not available. If we turn to Malayalam novels of the early twentieth-century, we will find the vision of a “lost original” transferred onto a slightly different social value.

New Practices of Narration: Looking at Anglo-Indian Photographs

Ankan Kazi Feb 20, 2021

Several photographic projects grappled with and against these processes of fixing the image of the Anglo-Indian community.

Chronicle or History? Looking at Anglo-Indian Photography

Ankan Kazi Feb 16, 2021

Indian literatures in English and the vernaculars contain a potent archive of thinking on photography.

Collecting the World: Cigarette Cards in South Asia

Ankan Kazi Feb 11, 2021

Cigarette cards were a fun, tactile way of creating affective bonds between tobacco companies and their customers.

M. Sain of Darjeeling: The Painted Photographs of Bengal

Ankan Kazi Jan 25, 2021

From the early twentieth-century, painted photographs were widely produced, distributed and collected. They represented a way of balancing the style of painting with the practice of photography.

Memory-Keeping with Archives: In Conversation with D. Junisha Khongwir

Ankita Ghosh May 24, 2024

In this edited interview, D. Junisha Khongwir, curator and board member at the NE India AV Archive, delves into the foundational ideas of the archive, the unique socio-cultural history of the Northeast Indian communities, and the potential for collective collaborations in sustaining stories from the region through aural and visual cues.

Collective Medias, Narrative Futures: Reading the Egaro Photo Festival

Ankita Ghosh Apr 06, 2024

Egaro (which translates to eleven in Bengali) spotlights work by eleven artists from the South-Asian region at each edition of the India Art Fair. Over the last few years, Egaro has garnered praise and have made an incredible mark towards visibilizing art practice from north-eastern India.

Re-Appropriating the Conventional: In Conversation with Nihaal Faizal

Ankita Ghosh Oct 19, 2023

In this edited excerpt of a conversation, Faizal delves into his earliest interactions with digital technology, how he came about his practice and exploring the creative potential that the gadget and the copy or replica present.

All the World’s a Stage: On The Chapal Bhaduri Story

Ankita Ghosh Aug 25, 2023

The Chapal Bhaduri Story, with a run time of 44 minutes, shines a light not only on what it takes to physically transition into character each evening but also on the inherent performance of gender when it comes to theatre and, above all, life outside of conventional society.

The Dimensions of Memory: Nostalgia for the Light by Patricio Guzmán

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 22, 2024

Nostalgia for the Light (2010), by Patricio Guzmán, follows the aftermath and impact of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's regime from 1973–90. Through his resolute narration, Guzmán’s documentary introduces us to the search for a past unravelling in the Atacama Desert in the 1970s.

Captive Portraits: White Van Stories by Leena Manimekalai

Annalisa Mansukhani Jul 04, 2024

White Van Stories by Leela Manimekalai is unafraid to put history in conversation with the pursuit of truth, and in doing so, it asserts a demand for culpability, engaged spectatorship and respect for the aggrieved and the disappeared.

Fabrications of a City: Maine Dilli Nahin Dekha by Humaira Bilkis

Annalisa Mansukhani Jun 17, 2024

In the short film Maine Dilli Nahin Dekha (I Am Yet To See Delhi, 2015) Dhaka-based independent filmmaker Humaira Bilkis presents the city of Delhi as a set of fleeting moments, imitating most first impressions of the city itself.

The Roles We Play: Sifting through the Familial in Shared Solitude

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 23, 2022

Isolated during the COVID crisis, coupled with a set of family emergencies, Khemka and Kokiloo were moved to wonder about what constitutes the familial, the ways it comes into being and, more often than not, how it remains a conjured reiteration of belonging.

Naked Repose: Undoing the Street in PHOTOINK’s The Passerby

Annalisa Mansukhani Jul 21, 2022

The Passerby brings together a selection of black-and-white photographs by Ketaki Sheth, Pablo Bartholomew, Raghu Rai and Sooni Taraporevala, stitching together a view of the street as encountered through decades of their photographic practice in India.

Analogies of Belonging: An Interview with Jasmine Nilani Joseph

Annalisa Mansukhani Apr 23, 2022

In her intricate practice of observation, Jasmine Nilani Joseph draws landscapes of separation that evolve from her personal histories and memories of living in Sri Lanka.

Between Motion and Stillness: In Conversation with Priyank Gothwal

Annalisa Mansukhani Mar 03, 2022

The practice of visual artist Priyank Gothwal occupies an intermediary position between the possibilities of still and moving images.

The Dissolution of a Home: Achal Mishra’s Gamak Ghar

Annalisa Mansukhani Feb 05, 2022

Set in Madhopur, Darbhanga, Gamak Ghar sketches the intimate portrait of a house, built by his grandfather in the 1950s in their ancestral village.

Between Seeing and Being Seen: Still City and Its Portrait of Mumbai

Annalisa Mansukhani Oct 25, 2021

Five student filmmakers proposed this filmic enquiry as a response to a prompt on the city’s streets that invited them to think about spaces of accessibility and inclusivity.

Narrating the Body in/as Data: WOUNDING, an Episode by Amitesh Grover

Annalisa Mansukhani Oct 19, 2021

In 2018, MASH India and the FICA instituted the MASH FICA Award: Supporting New Media Art Practice to promote and encourage critical perspectives on new media art, working to emphasise the expansiveness of the term.

Evocations of an Exchange: Review of Portrait of a House: Conversations with BV Doshi

Annalisa Mansukhani Oct 11, 2021

Dayanita Singh’s most recent work, Portrait of a House: Conversations with BV Doshi was published in August 2021, and in its simple, conversational texture it both unveils and maps a deeply philosophical undertaking.

Composing the Familial: Lina Vincent and Akshay Mahajan Discuss the Goa Familia Project

Annalisa Mansukhani Sep 14, 2021

In their interactions with families in Goa, Lina Vincent and Akshay Mahajan have found and foregrounded the linkages between the micro-genealogies of inheritances— such as family names—and larger notions of community, class and religion.

Metonymies and Methodologies: Lina Vincent and Akshay Mahajan Discuss the Goa Familia Project

Annalisa Mansukhani Sep 13, 2021

Spotlighting the family as a repository of memory and layered histories, the evolving Goa Familia project was developed under curator Rahaab Allana during the 2019 Serendipity Arts Festival.

Ways of Being (In a City): Review of Delhi: Looking Out/Looking In

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 28, 2021

In the summer of 2021, Aperture magazine published a volume titled Delhi: Looking Out/Looking In, guest-edited by curator Rahaab Allana.

Remembering in Rwanda: The Sanctity of the Aftermath in The Faces We Lost

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 24, 2021

In the documentary The Faces We Lost (2017), Piotr Cieplak highlights the family album as an object retrieved from obliteration and as simultaneously retrieving memories.

The (Un)Making of Memories: Piotr Cieplak’s The Faces We Lost

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 23, 2021

In The Faces We Lost—the 2017 documentary directed and produced by Piotr Cieplak—Paul Rukesha of the Genocide Archive speaks of the incurable affliction of living through the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide.

Sounding the Future: Queerness and Post-Human Love in Tejal Shah’s Video Art

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 15, 2021

Identifying as ecosexual, Tejal Shah’s interests lie in the areas of sexuality, gender and consciousness as well as exploring interspecies relationships between ecologies.

Synergies of a Site: Tracing Dharmendra Prasad’s Imagination of the Agrarian

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 09, 2021

Dharmendra Prasad’s artistic practice reads the agrarian landscape, its conflicts and cultural contexts through anthropological, folkloric and ecological vocabularies.

Inheriting an Otherhood: Trauma, Domesticity and Labour in Cheryl Mukherji’s Practice

Annalisa Mansukhani Jul 02, 2021

The Last Time (2020) is a work that builds a counter-archive around a specific memory of her mother and her mental illness, structured against the normative format of the family album.

Landscapes of Loss: Retelling the Marichjhapi Massacre with Soumya Sankar Bose

Annalisa Mansukhani May 30, 2021

Soumya Sankar Bose’s photographic project Where the Birds Never Sing centres on the forgotten massacre of several hundreds of Dalit refugees by the Left Front in West Bengal’s Marichjhapi in 1979.

Harvesting Images: Field Notes with Dharmendra Prasad

Annalisa Mansukhani May 26, 2021

Based in Guwahati, Assam, Dharmendra Prasad is an artist with a practice that spans the mediums of installation, video, painting, photography and performance.

Film as Archive: Abdel Salam Shehada’s Ila Aby (To My Father)

Anoushka Antonnette Mathews Oct 18, 2024

In the documentary Ila Aby (To My Father, 2008), Palestinian filmmaker Abdel Salam Shehada takes us through a photographic history of the ordinary lives of Palestinian people through archival images, news reports and conversations with photographers who ran photo studios in the 1950s and 1960s.

Films Beyond Borders: Priya Naresh’s Small-Time Cinema

Anoushkha Prasad Jun 04, 2024

Priya Naresh's documentary Small-Time Cinema (2022) follows two YouTube filmmaking groups–Assamese Chemistry from Sipajhar in Assam, India, and One Team Media from Hazara Town in Quetta, Pakistan and chronicles their journey of creating films about their own communities and issues, while also preserving their language and complex social and cultural histories.

Archiving the Photo Studio: Recall and Remembrance in Paper Envelopes

Anuja Mukherjee Jun 18, 2022

Passport-sized photographs have warranted inquiry for their stoic utilitarian malleability. Their travails between honorific and repressive portraiture have generated newer meanings along the way that keep evolving.

A Future for Forests: Amche Mollem

Arti Das Apr 05, 2023

Comprised of lawyers, scientists, artists, writers, poets and filmmakers, Amche Mollem has been working since 2020 to raise awareness about the endangered forests in Goa.

Oceanic Revolutions: Two Refusals… by Suneil Sanzgiri

Arundhati Chauhan Mar 07, 2024

Two Refusals is the third film in an ongoing exploration by Suniel Sanzgiri into the past and postcolonial refusals in Goan history. The film interweaves 16mm footage shot in Goa, Mumbai, Lisbon and Sagres in Portugal with altered archival footage, snippets from anticolonial films, CGI animation, and a poetic narrative written by Sham-e-Ali Nayeem.

Moving Past the Feeling: Nostalgia for the Future and Lovely Villa

Arushi Vats Mar 08, 2022

To reproduce a specific vision of the world in miniature is one way to describe the housing project which is at the centre of the documentary Lovely Villa: Architecture as Autobiography.

The Thrill of Acquisition: Pelin Esmer’s The Collector

Arushi Vats Jun 02, 2021

In the eleventh minute of The Collector (2002)—a documentary produced, directed, and shot by Pelin Esmer—we enter the promised land: an apartment in Istanbul packed to the rafters with objects of varying sizes and forms.

Where Was Time: The Public Clocks of Bombay

Arushi Vats Apr 11, 2021

Chirodeep Chaudhuri’s two-decade project documenting the public clocks of Bombay traces the residues of an era where the passage of time was marked by guiding objects on edifices of key buildings.

The Question of Form: Diwas Raja Kc Discusses Dalit: A Quest for Dignity

Arushi Vats Mar 23, 2021

In 2016, Nepal Picture Library curated the exhibition Dalit: A Quest for Dignity. Presented at the Patan Museum, it showcased over eighty photographs and records archiving the Dalit experience in Nepal.

Methodologies for New Histories: Diwas Raja Kc Discusses Dalit: A Quest for Dignity

Arushi Vats Mar 22, 2021

The end pages of Dalit: A Quest for Dignity (photo.circle and Nepal Picture Library, 2018) present scenes charged with resistance.

The Worker and the Machine: Decline of Ahmedabad’s Mill Industry in Working in the Mill No More

Arushi Vats Mar 05, 2021

In 1861, the city of Ahmedabad saw its first steam-driven cotton mill. Over the next six years, the Ahmedabad Spinning and Weaving Company grew from employing 63 workers to 500.

The Withering Public: Lives of Mill Workers in Working in the Mill No More

Arushi Vats Mar 05, 2021

Visions of abandonment and dereliction capture what follows the closure of the Ahmedabad mills.

The Street, Its Peoples: Box Camera Photography

Arushi Vats Feb 12, 2021

In the photobook Box Camera NOW which traces contemporary practitioners of box camera photography, Lukas Birk repeatedly emphasises the haptic qualities of the process.

Troubling Empire: Bakirathi Mani on Seher Shah

Arushi Vats Feb 11, 2021

Trained in architecture and fine arts, Seher Shah is concerned with the legacies of built structures and the genealogies of power embedded in constructed matter.

Juju Bhai Dhakhwa: Keeper of Memories

Arushi Vats Jan 18, 2021

Displayed at the inaugural Photo Kathmandu in 2015, Juju Bhai Dhakhwa’s personal archive of photographs were showcased in the very location they were shot—the streets of Patan and the Dhakhwa home.

Gaza: Love, Curse

Asim Rafiqui Oct 07, 2024

In the second part of his essay written amidst Israeli bombing of Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09, Asim Rafiqui writes about his encounter with Ismail Ibrahim Abu Eida, an encounter which made him pick up his camera again and tell the stories of Gazans.

Gaza's Endless Silences: On the Politics of Visibility

Asim Rafiqui Oct 05, 2024

In the first of this two-part essay, written in 2009, Asim Rafiqui reflects on his time in Gaza amidst Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09. As a document of his own attempts to grapple with routine scenes of displacement, deaths and burials, the essay sheds light on the historical repetition of violence against Palestinians.

Sikander Begum and Her Royal Court: Looking at the Waterhouse Albums

Avrati Bhatnagar Jun 26, 2021

Not only did Sikander Begum get her official portrait taken, she also offered James Waterhouse an insight into the sartorial splendour of the royal court of Bhopal.

Camera as Imperial Technology: Looking at the Waterhouse Albums

Avrati Bhatnagar Jun 22, 2021

The early history of photography in nineteenth-century British India is known for the large-scale mobilisation of the photographic camera as a technology of sustaining imperial rule.

Archiving the Archive: Dayanita Singh’s File Room

Avrati Bhatnagar Apr 12, 2021

Described in its abstract as “…an elegy to paper in the age of the digitization of information and knowledge,” the overarching presence of the folders and documents in the composition of these photographs puts forth a special relationship between the photograph and the archive.

Photography as a Fine Art: Experiments with the New Medium in British India

Avrati Bhatnagar Apr 04, 2021

While opinions in Europe were mostly divided on the consequent visual practices that emerged alongside the camera and whether they could be called “art” at all, there was no such dubious ascription to the status of photography in the colonial Indian milieu.

Imperial Projects of Exploration: Louis Rousselet in India

Avrati Bhatnagar Mar 26, 2021

An artist and traveller, Louis Rousselet set sail from Marseilles, France and arrived at the bustling harbour of erstwhile colonial Bombay in the year 1864.

In a Bittersweet Land: William Gedney in India

Avrati Bhatnagar Mar 04, 2021

Early in his career as a United States of America-based documentary and street photographer, William Gedney arrived in India in November 1969 with the intent to travel to Kolkata.

New Website on World Photography Day!

Editorial Aug 20, 2021

Six months since our launch in February, on World Photography Day 2021, we are excited to introduce our website in an attempt to reach out to and engage with a wider readership.

The Zamindars of Bengal: Looking at Santanu Dey's Lost Legacy

Gulmehar Dhillon Oct 12, 2021

A visual artist and independent photographer based in Kolkata, Santanu Dey’s work explores mythology, culture and socio-political issues, often locating itself at the intersection of art and documentary.

Koodankulam: Amirtharaj Stephen’s Documentation of the Protests

Gulmehar Dhillon Feb 15, 2021

Amirtharaj Stephen’s set of photographs titled Koodankulam: In My Backyard documents the protests by the local community against the Indian and Russian Governments' commissioning of the Koodankulam power plant.

The Disowned and the Denied: Saiful Huq Omi’s Documentation of the Exiled Community

Gulmehar Dhillon Feb 08, 2021

Saiful Huq Omi has documented the Rohingyas in exile around the world—in the camps of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, the cramped underground spaces of Malaysia and the hopeful streets of England.

Photographic Societies of Sri Lanka

Hitanshi Chopra Feb 23, 2021

The Amateur Photographic Association of Ceylon was established by Henricus Lorenz Wendt in 1906, almost fifty years after the medium was introduced to the island.

Gulf ⇄ South Asia: Unveiling Stories of Migration

Jennifer Chowdhry Biswas Feb 19, 2021

A colour photograph of a tailor from Gujarat working in Dubai, featured on the Instagram handle of Gulf ⇄ South Asia, is accompanied by an excerpt from an interview.

Road Trips Project: Redefining the Canon

Jennifer Chowdhry Biswas Feb 17, 2021

Romanticised in modern literature—primarily by white men—as a metaphor for freedom and adventure, road trips are almost a rite of passage for Americans.

Photograph as a Commodity: Professional Photography in Twentieth-Century Calcutta

Jigisha Bhattacharya Aug 30, 2022

As the modern technology of photography entered the social and cultural worlds of what we now know as India, the city of Calcutta fast became one of the firsts to accommodate the camera into its public life.

Seeing Kashmir as an Outsider: Snow as Metaphor

Jigisha Bhattacharya Jul 19, 2022

Sohrab Hura’s Snow (2015–ongoing) was recently exhibited at Art Basel OVR: 2021. This body of images concerns Kashmir in three phases of the arrival and departure of winter.

Colouring the Shadows: On Coloniality and Childhood

Kamayani Sharma Oct 29, 2024

Three short documentaries that explore the long colonisation of Palestinian childhoods in the last half-century are Jacques Madvo’s Blown by the Wind (1971), Khadijeh Habashneh’s Children without Childhood (1980) and Michel Khleifi’s Ma’loul Celebrates its Destruction (1984).

Against Abstraction: In Conversation with Maen Hammad and Dina Salem

Kamayani Sharma Sep 05, 2024

In this edited conversation with Kamayani Sharma, Palestinian photographers Maen Hammad and Dina Salem speak about Against Abstraction, an activation they initiated with Sari Tarazi and Ahmad Alaqra at Arles from 1 July to 7 July 2024, supported by DoubleDummy Studio.

Discerning the Marginal: Trolley Times and Documenting Protest

Kamayani Sharma Jun 06, 2024

Trolley Times (2023) is less an archive or chronicle than a measure of a historic velocity, marked at different points by campsite longueurs and spirited agitation. Echoing its beginning, the film’s closing sequence foregrounds the parallels between agricultural and journalistic processes, and the harvest of grains and facts, gauging the times of the trolley.

Circumambulating Space-Time: The Bicyclist Who Fell Into the Time-Cone

Kamayani Sharma Apr 12, 2024

Part annals, part poetics, The Bicyclist Who Fell Into the Time-Cone combines fact with fantasy, recalling mediaeval annual calendars illustrated with “labours of the months,” the vignettes located in the same visual field as the inscription of the year’s timeline. In the course of the film, various historical events, occurrences and figures from the year 1980 are inventoried, identifiable through tantalisingly oblique descriptions.

Cartographies of Control: Mapping Coastal Regulation Zones

Kavyasri Saravanan Sep 21, 2024

Historically, cartographic exercises have been used as potent instruments of state power, shaping territorial claims, resource allocation and social order as mechanisms of control. In India, an exemplary case is the delineation of Coastal Regulation Zones (CRZ) based on ecological sensitivity and development potential.

Still/Moving: The Spectacle of Film in The Cinema Travellers

Ketaki Varma Jun 24, 2021

The opening sequence of Amit Madheshiya and Shirley Abraham’s award-winning film The Cinema Travellers (2016) is electric. We see a man at work attempting to screen a film in what appears to be a tent in rural India.

A Space of One’s Own: An Interview with Tenzing Dakpa

Ketaki Varma Jun 10, 2021

In the second part of an ongoing conversation with Ketaki Varma, photographer Tenzing Dakpa unpacks the aesthetic choices that informed the making of his photoseries The Hotel.

Hotel/Home: An Interview with Tenzing Dakpa

Ketaki Varma Jun 09, 2021

Photographer Tenzing Dakpa’s photo series The Hotel, published as a photobook by Steidl in 2020, is a quiet reflection on the multiple realities that form one’s idea of home.

Instinct, Ethics and Image-Making: A Conversation with Ishan Tankha

Ketaki Varma May 09, 2021

In this continuing conversation with Ketaki Varma, photojournalist Ishan Tankha elaborates on the impact of the pandemic on his work and the ethics of photojournalistic practice, especially in contemporary India.

Countering Mainstream Narratives: A Conversation with Ishan Tankha

Ketaki Varma May 08, 2021

In the first of a two-part interview, Ishan Tankha speaks to Ketaki Varma about his work over these past two years; the challenges of documenting violence, grief and protest; and the role of social media today.

Big Powers, Small People: Revisiting Rashid Rana’s Ommatidia Series

Ketaki Varma Apr 17, 2021

From a distance, the portraits by Rashid Rana have the slightly grainy appearance of pixelated photographs. As one zooms in, the “pixels” are revealed to be photographs of thousands of ordinary young men from the streets of Lahore in Pakistan.

Breaking Stillness: An Interview with Susanta Mandal

Ketaki Varma Apr 14, 2021

What happens to still images within kinetic infrastructures? What is the relationship between image, movement and transience? Multimedia artist Susanta Mandal speaks to Ketaki Varma about some of these ideas.

Documenting Truth: An Interview with Masrat Zahra

Ketaki Varma Apr 01, 2021

Masrat Zahra speaks to Ketaki Varma about what drove her to photojournalism, offering a local, female perspective to Kashmiri narratives and the importance of a continued ethical journalistic practice.

Film as Social History: Debashree Mukherjee on Bombay Hustle

Ketaki Varma Mar 02, 2021

In the second session of this two-part conversation about Bombay Hustle, Mukherjee discusses the role of women during the transition to the talkie, the novel ways in which she researched the book, and why she thinks fans are an essential part of the cine-ecology.

The Ecology of Cinema: Debashree Mukherjee on Bombay Hustle

Ketaki Varma Mar 01, 2021

Mukherjee’s Bombay Hustle reveals itself as an ambitious history of these networks in Indian cinema. It offers a distinct portrait of the Bombay film industry during the silent to talkie transition of the 1920s–40s.

Looking Beyond the Cinematic: Sabeena Gadihoke’s Selling Soap and Stardom

Ketaki Varma Feb 15, 2021

In 2010, Tasveer Ghar: A House of Pictures invited scholars from around the world to comment on entrepreneur and art connoisseur Priya Paul’s collection of popular Indian art, which was digitised in 2008.

Lobby Cards: Preserving Cinema through Still Image

Ketaki Varma Feb 09, 2021

Before the age of television and the internet, much of film publicity relied on the still image; posters, lobby cards, song booklets, postcards and other printed material often featured photographs from the film.

The Film Poster as Art Object: Excerpt from Ranjani Mazumdar’s The Bombay Film Poster

Ketaki Varma Jan 18, 2021

The film poster occupies an important place within the world of cinema, in India and around the world, operating as an object of publicity from the beginning of the twentieth-century till today.

On Three Promises: The Palestinians’ Right to a Remembered Presence

Kshiraja Oct 16, 2024

With its non-linear editing of home-video footage tapes and present-day conversations underscored by the timestamps that hallmark the frames, Yousef Srouji’s film Three Promises (2023) reads to the audience like memory in itself, one that is kept hidden away and comes back sometimes in fragments, but all at the same time.

Farming the Revolution: Documentary Filmmaking as an Organising Tool

Kshiraja Oct 01, 2024

Farming the Revolution is remarkable not only in the documentation of the farmers’ protests, but in the way it relates to the movement itself and the possibilities it holds in terms of creative strategies of building and mobilising solidarity.

Through the Looking Glass: Pardesi and the Radical Power of Love

Madhubanti De Jun 14, 2023

Sunya brings an affective charge to her understanding of geopolitics through cinema, moving out of the confines not only of state-centric grand narratives but also beyond the rigid boundaries of a rational-critical mode of study.

Sirens of Modernity: Indian Cinema’s Place in the World

Madhubanti De Jun 12, 2023

With a close reading of a set of films and media objects ranging from Hindi film songs to bangles made of celluloid, Sirens of Modernity explores the role of media production in world-making activity.

Reading the Body: In Conversation with Sandeep TK

Mallika Visvanathan Feb 26, 2024

In this edited interview, artist Sandeep TK speaks about how he developed his practice, his approach to photoperformance, engaging with forms of representation and critically examining the world around him.

Acts of Witnessing: Amar Kanwar’s The Torn First Pages

Mallika Visvanathan Oct 15, 2021

Amar Kanwar’s The Torn First Pages provides interesting parallels to the present moment as Myanmar once again finds itself under military dictatorship.

A Preoccupation with Time: Revisiting Amar Kanwar’s The Torn First Pages

Mallika Visvanathan Oct 14, 2021

Artist and filmmaker Amar Kanwar’s body of work—spanning four decades—has consistently responded to conflict by presenting and archiving evidence.

Aspiring to a Nation-State from the Borderlands: Traces of the Personal in the Lhamo Tsering Archive

Mila Samdub Sep 22, 2021

While the previous piece looked at the Lhamo Tsering archive to narrate a lesser-known history of the Tibetan struggle, this post focuses on Lhamo Tsering’s personal history as it is reflected in his archive.

Narrating the Tibetan Resistance: The Lhamo Tsering Archive

Mila Samdub Sep 21, 2021

Between 1960 and 1974, a Tibetan guerrilla army operated out of a base in the high-altitude region of Mustang in northern Nepal.

Turbine Bagh: On Samosa Packets as Blueprints of Dissent

Najrin Islam Oct 26, 2022

The Turbine Bagh project emerged from an urgency to respond to incidents of mass arrests and incarcerations over the last few years in India and Bangladesh, with both countries currently under neo-fascist regimes.

Love and its Many Spectres: On Payal Kapadia’s Evocative Tapestries

Najrin Islam Oct 25, 2022

Aesthetics and politics coalesce in Payal Kapadia’s cinema and bears a site of creative re-imagination through the textured use of sound and image.

Interrupting the Archive: Renluka Maharaj on Indentureship and Historical Revisions

Najrin Islam Jul 26, 2022

Renluka Maharaj talks about using her work to bypass mainstream historiography and counter the imperialist rhetoric of indenture through subversive strategies of excess.

About/Despite/Besides Love: On Archana Phadke’s Inward Gaze

Najrin Islam Jul 18, 2022

About Love focuses its lens on the Phadke family in all their idiosyncrasies, as the director straddles the role of filmmaker, daughter and sibling during the course of its making for over three years.

Entangled Learnings: In Conversation with Pujita Guha for the Forest Curriculum

Najrin Islam May 21, 2022

Pujita Guha for the Forest Curriculum talks about how they consciously move towards an “eco-sophical” mode of thinking rooted in the cosmologies of the natureculture formation of zomia.

The Forest as Assemblage: In Conversation with Pujita Guha for the Forest Curriculum

Najrin Islam May 19, 2022

Premised on a cultural-activist ethos, the Forest Curriculum was founded in 2018 by artist-curator Abhijan Toto and media theorist Pujita Guha.

Feminist Geographies: On Indu Antony’s Practice

Najrin Islam May 11, 2022

At the talk "The Power of Art" at IAF 2022, Antony spoke about two of her projects in particular: Cecilia’ed and Namma Katte, with regard to creating a “feminist geography” (Pamela Moss) in practice.

Memory, Material and the Spectral: In Conversation with Sumakshi Singh

Najrin Islam Apr 26, 2022

Working with and against perspective, depth and illusion, artist Sumakshi Singh’s installations are extensions of queries around material flexibility.

Analogue Retellings: In Conversation with Ashish Sahoo

Najrin Islam Feb 10, 2022

In Ashish Sahoo’s work with film photography, the medium and the content are intricately connected, and each serves the other in the production of alternative vocabularies for traditional narratives.

Experiments with the Liminal: In Conversation with Rahul Sharma

Najrin Islam Feb 08, 2022

Professionally engaged in art conservation, Sharma insists that each medium of photography has its unique grammar and technical relationship with the content, even if the photographer is the primary agent.

Image-Making without the Lens: In Conversation with Srinath Iswaran

Najrin Islam Feb 07, 2022

Artist Srinath Iswaran uses his interest in systems and structures to reinterpret space by playing with contact-exposure and make images without the use of cameras.

Linguistic Knots and Enduring Images: On Spandan Banerjee's English India

Najrin Islam Dec 10, 2021

Spandan Banerjee’s English India begins with the nuances of the eponymous language as they are passed through generations in the Anglophone academia in Calcutta, a remnant of said instruction in the former imperial capital.

Fluvial Embodiments: On Abhinava Bhattacharyya’s Jamnapaar

Najrin Islam Nov 23, 2021

“Jamnapaar” translates to “trans-Yamuna,” and refers to the eponymous river in a state of passage—running through Delhi, dividing the city into two relatively favourable halves.

In Guftgu with Absent Bodies: Nida Mehboob on the Persistent Anguish of Pakistani Ahmadis

Najrin Islam Oct 22, 2021

The Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan exists in scattered geographical pockets as a persecuted minority.

Digital Flânerie: The Garga Archives in the Contemporary

Najrin Islam Oct 13, 2021

Initially conceived as a book, the Garga Archives emerged from sustained interaction between Anuj Malhotra of the Lightcube film collective and Donabelle Garga—wife of late filmmaker and historian Bhagwan Das Garga.

An Embattled Territory: On Afghan Cinema and Roya Sadat’s Feminist Gaze

Najrin Islam Oct 09, 2021

Roya Sadat’s first film, Seh Noktah (2003), was penned clandestinely during the Taliban era. It was converted into a film after their fall, using equipment borrowed from journalists.

The Image-Maker: Remembering Danish Siddiqui’s Eye for Detail

Najrin Islam Oct 06, 2021

As a conflict photographer, Danish Siddiqui was aware of the dangers attendant to his physical presence at the peripheries of volatile events.

Home in the City: On Sooni Taraporevala’s Intimate Portraiture

Najrin Islam Oct 05, 2021

Home in the City follows Mumbai through its change of nomenclature, imbued with an affection for its populating faces that reveals the photographer’s position as an insider to its multifaceted history.

Selfhood and Symbolic Excess: On Bunu Dhungana’s Confrontations

Najrin Islam Oct 01, 2021

Menstruation is a potent taboo in many South Asian communities—a biological imperative rendered “impure” by fact of its occurrence and visibility.

Performing the Nuclear Sublime: Himali Singh Soin’s static range

Najrin Islam Sep 09, 2021

Himali Singh Soin’s performative work, static range, is situated at the intersection of archives, science, the speculative and the anecdotal.

Archiving the Night Sky: In Conversation with Astrophotographer Ajay Talwar

Najrin Islam Sep 03, 2021

Astrophotography―or astronomical imaging―is a time-bound lens art associated with amateur astronomy. It is defined by the pursuit of taking aesthetically pleasing images, rather than collecting scientific data.

Conflict Sites and Militant Botany: Moonis Ahmad Shah’s Gul-e-Curfew

Najrin Islam Aug 31, 2021

Moonis Ahmad Shah charts a taxonomic model for botanical forms that have seemingly evolved in tandem with the constraints, dilations and extractions prevalent in contested zones.

Mobilising Absence: Mariam Ghani on the Precarity of Archival Practices

Najrin Islam Aug 14, 2021

What We Left Unfinished emerged out of director Mariam Ghani’s engagement with the Afghan Film archives on a digitisation initiative meant to reinsert Afghan films into wider circulation.

An Index of Unfinished Histories: Mariam Ghani on Afghan Cinema

Najrin Islam Aug 13, 2021

Mariam Ghani's What We Left Unfinished interrogates the idealised Afghan national imaginary by resuscitating five unifinished films from Afghanistan's communist phase.

Archives in Transit: From Analogue to Digital Registers

Najrin Islam Jun 28, 2021

Through his project, this archive has no legs, Srinivas Kuruganti resurrected a personal archive of photographs taken in New York in the 1990s.

Waiting for the Image: Experiments in Analogue Printmaking

Najrin Islam Jun 27, 2021

The Analogue Approach Project 2020 was premised on anticipation, as it actively traversed the long distance back to analogue methods of printmaking.

Jejuri: A Reflection in Nine Frames

Ninad Pandit Sep 13, 2024

In an ode to the Khandoba temple at Jejuri, shot on Kodak Vision3 250D film, Ninad Pandit explores the tension between the flaneur, the outsider looking in and the history and significance of the site.

Constructing Worlds: Ruwangi Amarasinghe’s Fantastical Forests

Pamudu Tennakoon Apr 09, 2024

Drawing from a lifelong interest in the natural world and an affinity with animals, Ruwani Amarasinghe explores the world we live in through non-human counterparts.

In Person: Live with The Analogue Approach Project (TAAP)

Prabhakar Duwarah Dec 13, 2021

The Analogue Approach Project (TAAP) is a Delhi-based initiative that explores the culture of printmaking, the perspectives of printmakers and the stories behind their images.

Of Music and Solidarity: Sons and Fathers by Sumathy Sivamohan

Pramodha Weerasekera Sep 26, 2024

Sons and Fathers (2017) is part of filmmaker Sumathy Sivamohan’s inspirational repertoire of independent films made over many years amidst government censorship and excessive control of the film industry in Sri Lanka. It is Sivamohan’s powerful and detailed fictional telling about 1983’s Black July riots and the ensuing civil war in Sri Lanka.

In Solitary Confinement: Safe Haven by Gopa Trivedi

Pramodha Weerasekera Jul 02, 2024

Safe Haven is an extension of Gopa Trivedi’s previous work, exploring notions of home, which the artist presents as a state close to solitary confinement in prison, of zero physical or social engagement with the outside world. Home thus becomes a kind of incarceration, which often leads inmates to develop psychological ailments.

A Fantasy Collaboration: When Colours Return Home to Light by Cassie Machado

Pramodha Weerasekera Apr 02, 2024

Cassie Machado's new series When Colours Return Home to Light (2024) considers how one can build on Sri Lankan modernist pioneer Lionel Wendt’s ideologies and practices by adding more nuance through content as well as material and technical change.

Images of Illusion: In Conversation with Irushi Tennekoon

Pramodha Weerasekera Aug 07, 2023

In this conversation, Sri Lankan artist, illustrator and filmmaker Irushi Tennekoon delves into her practice, her fascination with stop motion and the manner in which the medium lends itself to creative storytelling.

Revisiting Black July: ’83 A Very Short Film

Pramodha Weerasekera Jun 29, 2023

’83: A Very Short Film (2016), a stop-motion animated film by Sumudu Athukorala, Sumedha Kelegama and Irushi Tennekoon, attempts to capture the historical and emotional nuances of Black July.

Protests in Monochrome: In Conversation with Tavish Gunasena

Pramodha Weerasekera May 22, 2023

Tavish Gunasena began recording the Aragalaya (a Sinhala word that loosely translates to “struggle”) movement in March 2022. In this conversation, Gunasena discusses his use of monochrome and the need to share records of the protests publicly.

The Everyday in Citizens’ Protests: In Conversation with Tashiya de Mel

Pramodha Weerasekera May 12, 2023

Tashiya de Mel is a documentary photographer, communications specialist and conservationist. She uses visual storytelling to create narratives that drive social change and highlight the impact of socio-economic and environmental issues in Sri Lanka.

Contesting Identities: In Conversation with Minal Naomi Wickrematunge

Pramodha Weerasekera May 03, 2023

In this conversation, Wickrematunge discusses her series Tambi (2020) about her grand-uncle, Tambimuttu. She also discusses an untitled series made in the same year about Minnette de Silva.

In Search of Justice: In Conversation with Minal Naomi Wickrematunge

Pramodha Weerasekera May 01, 2023

In this conversation, Minal speaks about the ways in which she attempted to understand and capture de Zoysa as a mysterious yet familiar character.

On Postcolonial Sartorial Trends: Civilizing Serendib by Anoli Perera

Pramodha Weerasekera Mar 21, 2022

In Sri Lankan artist Anoli Perera’s I Let My Hair Loose: Protest Series, anonymous, often faceless women dressed in the Kandyan sari as well as dresses of colonial origin are depicted in monochrome images.

Heroines in Stop Motion: Animate Her by Irushi Tennekoon

Pramodha Weerasekera Mar 15, 2022

Tennekoon's series Animate Her retells the stories of several ordinary Sri Lankan women on extraordinary journeys.

Epics on Celluloid: Sinhala Cinema After the Civil War

Pramodha Weerasekera Mar 05, 2022

Ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhala community and the minority Tamil community has long dominated Sri Lanka’s politics and history.

Engaging with the Surface: Materiality, Memories and the Digital in Sheetal Mallar’s Braided

Pronita Tripathi Aug 28, 2024

Sheetal Mallar’s series Braided (2023), in many ways, is an exploration of the afterlife of the family album, in the form of the photobook in the digital age.

The International Criminal Court: Is the “Child of Nuremberg” Universal?

Radhika Saraf Aug 26, 2024

Radhika Saraf writes on how South Africa, in fidelity to the integrity of the Nuremberg principles, presented a remarkable genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice in January 2024 to preserve the foundation of Palestinian life.

The Tokyo Trial: “Victor’s Justice”?

Radhika Saraf Aug 25, 2024

Radhika Saraf writes on the distinction between “crime against man” and “crime against the white man” as revealed in the Tokyo Trial.

Humanity After Nuremberg: The Colour Line

Radhika Saraf Aug 24, 2024

Radhika Saraf writes on how W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of “the colour line” can explain why atrocities that were being committed by the West onto the colonial peoples went without consequence, but provoked a stringent response when committed in Europe during WWII.

While We Watched: “Godi Media” and Ravish Kumar’s Dissent

Radhika Saraf Jun 28, 2024

Recipient of the Peabody Award 2024, Vinay Shukla’s documentary film, While We Watched (2023), is a sensitive portrayal of former NDTV journalist Ravish Kumar, amidst the rise of what Kumar labels pejoratively as “Godi Media.”

The Undead Child: Samira Makhmalbaf’s At Five in the Afternoon

Radhika Saraf Apr 26, 2024

Reading this film in the present is a reminder of the undead, the not-yet-dead, the children under the rubble in Gaza—faced with bombs and death in Jabalia, Al-Maghazi and Nuseirat refugee camps, with “barely a drop (of water) to drink” as per UNICEF estimates—that offer the condition for resistance, by asking us as citizens to consider their humanity not as exception, but as foundational to our being in the world.

At Five in the Afternoon: Colonial Wars and (in) the Slippage of History

Radhika Saraf Apr 25, 2024

Iranian filmmaker Samira Makhmalbaf’s film At Five in the Afternoon (2003) tells the story of a young woman’s ambition for an education in Afghanistan, set against the backdrop of the American invasion against the Taliban in 2001.

A Camera Enters the Mind’s Eye: In Conversation with Vijay Sarathy

Radhika Sharma Sep 11, 2023

In this edited conversation, the photographer and visual artist Vijay Sarathy discusses his journey and how the medium allowed him to become a conservator of natural memories.

सिनेमा और रेडियो: अंतर्माध्यम जुगलबंदी - II

Ravikant Feb 16, 2021

फ़िल्मी गीतों के प्रति आकाशवाणी के सख़्त ऐतिहासिक रवैये के उलट व्यावसायिक सिनेमा में आम तौर पर रेडियो को बेपनाह मोहब्बत के साथ पेश किया गया है, जो सिनेमा के लिए रेडियो की अहमियत का सुबूत है.

सिनेमा और रेडियो: अंतर्माध्यम जुगलबंदी

Ravikant Jan 19, 2021

दक्षिण एशिया में देखने-सुनने वाली चीज़ यानि सिनेमा को 'सिर्फ़ सुनने' का तगड़ा रिवाज रहा है, क्योंकि गीत-संगीत का सबसे बड़ा ज़ख़ीरा यहाँ फ़िल्मी ही है. फ़िल्मी गीतों को सुनने के माध्यम महँगे ग्रामोफ़ोन की अपेक्षा आसानी से और सस्ते में उपलब्ध रेडियो व ट्रांज़िस्टर रहे हैं. यानि सिनेमा और रेडियो के बीच इस ऐतिहासिक अंतर्माध्यम जुगलबंदी के चलते उनको साथ पढ़े जाने की ज़रूरत है.

Pramod Pati’s Film Experiments: Negotiating Film Form within Governmental Frameworks

Ritika Kaushik Oct 11, 2023

Exploring the interiorities and experimenting with newer forms of cinematic renderings and techniques, Pati’s “madness” can be seen as a microcosmic spirit of the time at FD. His films symbolise the changing face of documentary film practice in India.

Madness and Mandates: Pramod Pati's Film Experiments

Ritika Kaushik Oct 09, 2023

Born in 1932, Pati was a graduate of science and a cinematography diploma holder who became renowned for his experimental animation in films.

Kaagaz Ke Phool at Metro: Nostalgia Tethered

Rohan Dominic Mathews Sep 07, 2024

Guru Dutt's cult classic Kaagaz ke Phool (1959) at the iconic Metro theatre invites us to examine and complicate the sense of nostalgia accompanying such screenings.

A Fragmented History: Contemporary Filmmaking in Assam

Sagorika Singha Aug 09, 2024

The last decade can be considered one of the most prolific periods in Assamese film production. Many of them are recognised and awarded for their excellence both nationally and internationally. One common factor in all of them has been their funding source, at least for their first venture. Filmmakers including Bhaskar Hazarika, Reema Borah, Kenny Basumatary and Rima Das, to name a few, all crowdfunded or self-funded their first films.

What Art Memes to Me: Memes and Art/Memes as Art?

Sagorika Singha Jun 26, 2024

Memes offer a mirror image of our volatile present as much as their avant-garde heritage, which can be connected to their innate subversive potential and their cultivation by the online subcultural community. These digital objects can stand in for alternative groups both in a negative as well as positive way—as new tools of solidarity for minorities and other marginalised people as well as hateful tools for the rest.

Memes Beyond Borders: A Bangladeshi Meme Icon in India

Sagorika Singha Mar 11, 2024

Hero Alom became a sensation as a meme icon, which in this day and age is arguably a desirable social currency. Through the figure of Alom, one can consider the dichotomies of “good” and “bad” art and transnational/intertextual media.

Platform Proficiency: Influencers to Aspiring Creators

Sagorika Singha Mar 05, 2024

Through his instructional videos, Dimpu Baruah shifts the experience of community empowerment in a neoliberal creator economy where garnering engagement online depends on one’s competence in using the platform.

Viral Rap: Protest Songs on YouTube

Sagorika Singha Feb 29, 2024

Between December 2019 and January 2020, several protest songs against the CAA emerged from Assam and were released on various YouTube channels. The discussion generated around the YouTube protest songs reflects the ingrained anxiety about “illegal migrants”, which is then concretised as this genre of songs propagates the criteria of “ethnic Assamese” identity.

To Measure a Fold: Installation Instructions in Mrinalini Mukherjee’s Archive

Samira Bose Jan 30, 2023

This is the final instalment in a four-part series of conversations around the Mrinalini Mukherjee Archive with archivists Noopur Desai and Pallavi Arora from Asia Art Archive, India.

“I start with an image…”: On Mrinalini Mukherjee’s Travels as an Artist

Samira Bose Jan 20, 2023

In an interview manuscript from Mrinalini Mukherjee’s personal archive, on being asked about her working process, she responded: "I start with an image in mind which could be floral or human.."

Mapping Material Infrastructures: Mrinalini Mukherjee Archive

Samira Bose Jan 11, 2023

This is the second part of the ongoing series of conversations with Noopur Desai and Pallavi Arora at AAA, who organised and digitised the Mrinalini Mukherjee archive.

Accessing Excess in Mrinalini Mukherjee’s Archive: In Conversation with Archivists

Samira Bose Jan 09, 2023

In this first of a four-part conversation with Noopur Desai and Pallavi Arora, we focus on the extensive presence of visually dense photo-documentation in Mukherjee’s archive, and their granular experience of the materials as archivists.

Acts of Tracing, Cutting, Isolating: On Nihaal Faizal’s Solo Exhibition ‘Special FX’

Samira Bose May 07, 2022

Bengaluru-based artist Nihaal Faizal grew up in India in the 1990s, the decade following the moment of economic liberalisation in the country as the markets opened up in 1991.

The Stories We Follow: On LAB Collective’s Multimedia Film Dante Katha

Samira Bose Apr 16, 2022

In the opening scenes of Dante Katha, we follow a young girl in pigtails tied with red ribbons, carrying a packed school bag through the sloping streets and markets of Darjeeling.

Visualising What is Heard: On Nyima D. Bhotia’s Research Practice

Samira Bose Apr 15, 2022

Researcher and anthropologist Nyima Dorjee Bhotia’s long-term, personal archival work explores the Walungnga community of the Upper Tamor Valley in Nepal, where he hails from.

Floating Imaginations: Afrah Shafiq’s Sultana’s Reality

Samira Bose Mar 14, 2022

Sultana’s Reality (2017) is an interactive multimedia work that draws on artist and illustrator Afrah Shafiq’s time spent in the archives at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.

The Painted in the Performed: Photo-Documentation of Nilima Sheikh’s Theatre Collaborations

Samira Bose Oct 23, 2021

Within the archive of artist Nilima Sheikh, there is a focus on the collaborative nature of her feminist practice, which included her work in theatre design between 1989 and 2001.

Looking, Searching: Visual References in Nilima Sheikh’s Archive

Samira Bose Aug 10, 2021

Nilima Sheikh practises predominantly in the medium of painting, with works on paper, large scrolls and installations, as well as theater set designs and illustrations for children’s books.

The Other Story: Exhibition Documentation in Rasheed Araeen’s Archive

Samira Bose Jul 27, 2021

Rasheed Araeen moved to London in the 1960s after his education in Karachi, and is considered a pioneer of minimalist sculpture in Britain.

A Public Presence: Selected Photo-Documentation in Zubeida Agha’s Archive

Samira Bose Jun 30, 2021

In pioneering modern artist Zubeida Agha’s personal archive, we see photographs that portray Agha’s role and position in the modern art spaces of Pakistan and the international art scene.

Annotating a History of Photography: Reading Jyoti Bhatt’s Archive

Samira Bose May 29, 2021

Jyoti Bhatt's personal archive—digitised by Asia Art Archive—is composed of travel diaries, sketchbooks, designs, writings and artwork documentation, as well as the photographs captured by him to document the “Living traditions of India.”

Postcolonial Gestures: Cultural Transference in Creature

Sanjita Majumder Oct 04, 2023

Asif Kapadia’s cinematic capture of the gestures and choreographies of movements in Creature explores the terrain of fusing Indian classical forms with Western ballet.

Spectral Resurgence: Silent Cinema in Asif Kapadia and Akram Khan’s Creature

Sanjita Majumder Oct 03, 2023

Creature is a film devised under the impetus of “pure cinema”, which emphasises technical exploration in the creation of a narrative, without the aid of speech, language or dialogue.

Against Erasure: To Remember is to Reconstruct

Santasil Mallik Oct 09, 2024

In the English-Arabic bilingual photo book Against Erasure (2024), co-editors Sandra Barrilaro and Teresa Aranguren take Johnny Mansour’s collection as a starting point to compile previously unpublished photographs of Palestine encompassing the period from 1898 to 1948.

Imagistic Traces from the Pandemic: still, life by Ishan Tankha

Santasil Mallik Sep 19, 2024

Ishan Tankha recently exhibited a triadic set of zines titled still, life at this year’s edition of Pulp Society’s Paper & Play. The zine collection follows an ambulatory trail, primarily across Delhi and its outskirts, taking the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 as its focal point.

The Trees Can Speak: In Conversation with Prasiit Sthapit

Santasil Mallik Jan 10, 2024

In this continuing conversation, Prasiit Sthapit reflects on the different formats of work he engages with and the conversations he undertakes in gathering stories from people, places and traumatic pasts.

Subject, Form and Process: In Conversation with Prasiit Sthapit

Santasil Mallik Jan 09, 2024

In this conversation, Nepali artist Prasiit Sthapit shares how he developed his documentary photography practice by following his curiosity and the processes that contributed to his varied visual language.

Uneventful Austerity: Babu Eshwar Prasad’s Hariva Nadige Maiyella Kaalu

Santasil Mallik Jun 07, 2023

Babu Eshwar Prasad’s practice of painting surreal landscapes, often moulded by dreams and psychic realities, finds its way into the film. He refashions landscapes and surrounding spaces in ways that ideate the characters’ inexplicable subjective designs.

Fables of Development: Gaurav Puri’s Dhundgiri Ke Phool

Santasil Mallik May 05, 2023

Having premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) earlier this year, the film maps the disintegrating character of Soni, a village in West Bengal, when the construction of an ultramodern airport is set about in its vicinity.

Fading Realities: The Films of Rafeeq Ellias

Satyavrat KK Dec 06, 2023

Much like his approach to the questions posed to him during the screening, Ellias’ films are best defined by a not self-serious form of the Indic concept of rajas, a value-neutral and energetic sort of passion.

Running Away and Hiding: B.V. Karanth at the Movies

Satyavrat KK Jul 28, 2023

B.V Karanth’s expertise lay in Hindi and the various languages of the Dakshina Kannada region, be it Tulu, Konkani, or Kannada. He later became the director of his alma mater, the National School of Drama, taking students to the countryside to acquire various folk traditions by osmosis.

Furtive Naivete: Seeing Udupi Hotels Like Stig Toft Madsen

Satyavrat KK Jun 09, 2023

In 1991, the year India declared its unambiguous participation in the neoliberal global market economy, Madsen had descended to South India to research Udupi hotels.

Kathapurushan: The Story of a State

Satyavrat KK May 24, 2023

Kathapurushan rose out of a co-production offer made by Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK), the Japanese government-owned public broadcaster, despite Adoor Gopalakrishnan having no real story in order at the time.

Kathai Thiraikathai Vasanam Iyakkam: Parthiban’s Idea of Tamil Cinema

Satyavrat KK Feb 03, 2023

R. Parthiban’s appetite for risk, offset by his more lucrative acting cameos, has kept him afloat in a rather merciless industry, with shelves of unmade scripts often lying in cold storage.

Selar Sabu of Mysore: Revisiting the Elephant Boy

Satyavrat KK Aug 22, 2022

To most people living in India, Selar Sabu’s story would presage the modern flight of Indians to other countries, though Sabu’s own times might have made his trajectory rather exceptional.

Ethnonationalist Impulses: Shankar Nag and the Cinema of Karnataka

Satyavrat KK Aug 04, 2022

While most Kannada actors get their fair share of real estate on the many autos that ply in Bengaluru city, Shankar Nag’s presence diminishes most other displays of fandom among the city’s working class.

From Majestic to Gandhinagar: The Slow Decline of Bengaluru’s Kannada Film Industry

Satyavrat KK Aug 02, 2022

Earlier, a cinema hall named Majestic lent its name to the central transport hub of the city as well as its surrounding residential neighbourhoods, and what remains now in the theatre’s place is an empty plot.

Metamorphosising City: Bengaluru’s Public Sector in Cinema

Satyavrat KK Jun 30, 2022

A cursory online search of ‘Bangalore’ would immediately invite a plague of epithets such as ‘Silicon Valley’ and ‘IT Hub,’ or more prosaic ones like ‘Pensioner’s Paradise’ and ‘Garden City’.

An Intimate Requiem: Alana Hunt Discusses Cups of nun chai

Senjuti Mukherjee May 01, 2021

Australian artist and writer Alana Hunt’s decade-long iterative work Cups of nun chai searches for meaning in the face of the Indian state’s absurd brutality in Kashmir.

On a People's History: Suchitra Vijayan Discusses Midnight's Borders

Senjuti Mukherjee Apr 08, 2021

Lawyer, photographer and political analyst Suchitra Vijayan’s new publication Midnight’s Borders came out of her travels across 9000 miles of India’s borderlands over seven years.

On Witness: An Interview with Sanjay Kak

Senjuti Mukherjee Feb 27, 2021

In this interview, Kak speaks to us about being the editor and publisher of the book Witness: Kashmir 1986-2016: Nine Photographers featuring two hundred images archiving the everyday repressive practices of the state.

Imagined Archives: An Interview with Shan Bhattacharya

Senjuti Mukherjee Feb 26, 2021

Shan Bhattacharya is a self-taught photographer and artist based in Kolkata. In this conversation, we discuss his recent book, PORTAL: The Curious Account of Achintya Bose.

Lobbying, Pimping, Sycophancy: The Denial of Repression in Bangladesh

Shahidul Alam Aug 05, 2024

The standard practice that the government has adopted towards anyone who questions government policy by labelling them a ‘terrorist’ and ‘anti-liberation’ is deeply insulting to people who are committed to the principles of egalitarianism, social justice, and democracy—the underlying principles of the war of liberation of Bangladesh.

The Shedding of Memory: Lament of a Tree by Iqra Tanveer

Shalmali Shetty May 16, 2024

The Pakistani artist and photographer Iqra Tanveer persistently gravitates towards Eastern philosophies around time and collective consciousness, in opposition to the largely Euro-centric approach of perceiving the world through the individual.

Flags of Our (Migrating) Fathers: Fields of Punjab, Aflutter

Shankar Tripathi Dec 12, 2023

Fields Aflutter (2021–present), Peshawaria’s documentary interrogation of Punjab’s agrarian landscape, makes one thing abundantly clear from the beginning: there is nobody present to greet us in these photographs, for all those who lived here have left.

Experimenting with Mediums: On Sunita Maharjan’s Mixed Media Works

Sheelasha Rajbhandari Apr 21, 2022

In this on-site conversation between Sheelasha Rajbhandari and visual artist and art educator Sunita Maharjan, we look at the installation Above the Earth, Beneath the Sky, where wheat grows out of tall iron pillars.

Exploring Time, Identity and Nationhood: On Karan Shrestha’s Waiting For Nepal

Sheelasha Rajbhandari Apr 20, 2022

This on-site conversation between Triennale curator Sheelasha Rajbhandari and inter-disciplinary artist Karan Shrestha focusses on the latter’s photo series Waiting for Nepal.

Archives of Agrarian Unrest: The Sivalokathyagar Temple

Shibi Nandan Sep 14, 2024

Achalpuram stands out as a rare case in the history of Chola temple architecture where moments of resistance by tenant cultivators—who had little to no control over the Brahmin temples—have found a place on the temple walls.

To Film a City: In Conversation with Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran

Shweta Kishore Aug 31, 2024

In this continuing conversation with Shweta Kishore, Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran from the artistic collective CAMP discuss their engagement with documentary cultures, the use of soundscapes and the construction of a new kind of spectatorship.

A Tripod Made of Stone: Interview with CAMP’s Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran

Shweta Kishore Aug 30, 2024

In this edited conversation with Shweta Kishore, Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran speak about the inception of CAMP as an artistic collective and their continuing focus on decentering relations of being, seeing and being seen.

Bigamy, Scandal and the Homewrecker Film: Bollywood in the 1980s

Silpa Mukherjee Sep 13, 2022

Reports in film magazines in the 1980s voiced the continuous anxiety of what might become of “our film culture” if homewrecking and bigamy were normalised, and thus made respectable.

Disco Music and the Diaspora: A New Islamicate in Bombay Cinema

Silpa Mukherjee Jul 14, 2022

In a pre-music video, pre-MTV age, reports of music release parties play a fascinating role in reconstructing the lost visual object.

Bollywood’s Tryst with Orchestra Music: The Instruments of Disco in the 1980s

Silpa Mukherjee Jul 12, 2022

Journalist and critic Geeta Dayal suggests that disco music was very much part of the zeitgeist in the 1980s, with Bollywood film soundtracks chock-a-block with such songs.

The Emergency and Stardom in India: Crackdowns on Creative Liberty in the 1970s

Silpa Mukherjee Jun 28, 2022

The censorship regulations were a subject of frequent discussion in film magazines between 1975 and 1977—a dark period in independent India’s history—sometimes as gossip or sarcasm, and sometimes as serious statements.

The Video Moment: Piracy and the Bombay Film Producer

Silpa Mukherjee Jun 20, 2022

Magnum Video, one of the major video distributors of Bombay cinema was officially established in 1987. There were some deliberate confusions over its proprietors and real owners.

3D Celluloid: Experiments in Indian Cinema of the 1980s

Silpa Mukherjee Mar 26, 2022

Malayalam film My Dear Kuttichathan was the first three-dimensional film to be released in India and one of the biggest money-spinners in the history of Indian cinema.

Afterlives and After-acts: A Reflection on Phototrope's Documentation

Stuti Bhavsar Jan 04, 2023

This continued essay focuses on Phototrope’s photographic documentation—a record-making considered crucial for the afterlife of an exhibit—and the agents that frame the readings of the work through its documentation.

Revisiting Phototrope: Afterimages and Between Presences

Stuti Bhavsar Jan 02, 2023

Tahireh Lal's second solo show, Phototrope, consisted of an interpretive map of the night sky and a time-based installation, spatially punctuated by text-based works referencing rhymes and verses.

Divergent Trails: Prasanna Vithanage's Paradise

Sucheta Chakraborty Aug 07, 2024

The sense of disconnect that works its way into Prasanna Vithanage's Paradise finds its sharpest delineation in manner which the same thing in the film comes to hold radically different meanings for different groups of people in Sri Lanka.

Restoring Manthan: Cinephilia in the Age of Multiplexes

Sucheta Chakraborty Jul 08, 2024

Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, the founder-director of the Film Heritage Foundation recently helmed a resoundingly successful restoration project of Shyam Benegal’s Manthan (The Churning, 1976). The restored film travelled to foreign shores and then was recently rereleased back to the Indian public—a full circle given that the film was famously financed by half a million dairy farmers who had each contributed Rs 2 towards its production.

Peeking Behind the Lens: In Conversation with Arvind Kashyap

Sucheta Chakraborty Sep 01, 2023

In this edited interview, Kashyap talks about his inspirations for Hostel Hudugaru Bekagiddare, filming close to a hundred characters for the film, the different shooting approaches used in Kantara and Hostel as well as Kannada cinema’s recent resurgence.

Myth-Making in the Streets: Garuda Gamana Vrishabha Vahana with Raj B. Shetty

Sucheta Chakraborty Mar 30, 2023

Raj B. Shetty speaks about mythological borrowings for his gangster film, making films in Mangalore and putting its geography, people and rhythm on screen.

At Play: In Conversation with Jiten Thukral

Sucheta Chakraborty Feb 20, 2023

Jiten Thukral talks about archives, how they bring about an appreciation for the process of making art and the importance of roleplay in art-based games to build empathy.

And Quiet Flows the Adi Ganga: Re-imagining Urban Space through Riverine Ecology

Sujaan Mukherjee Feb 01, 2023

Madhuja Mukherjee’s installation, Kolikatar Nakshi-kotha was an attempt to create a visual narrative of the channel, using it as both route and method for revisiting and remapping the city.

Quarter Number 4/11: Looking Back Ten Years On

Sujaan Mukherjee Mar 11, 2022

Filmmaker and activist Ranu Ghosh had met Singh quite by chance two years prior to the demolition of quarter 4/11.

the-death-of-a-leader-funeral-processions-as-spectacle-in-the-early-twentieth-century

একজন মেয়রের মৃত্যু: শোকযাত্রার ভিডিও রেকর্ডিং ও প্রদর্শনী

Sujaan Mukherjee Oct 29, 2021

চিত্তরঞ্জন দাশের শেষ কিছুদিন কাটে দারজিলিং–এ তাঁর এক বন্ধুর বাড়িতে, যার নাম “স্টেপ অ্যাসাইড”। ১৬ই জুন তাঁর মৃত্যুর পর, খবর ছড়িয়ে যায় দ্রুত বেগে।

এক শরীরচর্চাবিদের আর্কাইভ: ফোটোগ্রাফ, মৌখিক ও দৈহিক ইতিহাস

Sujaan Mukherjee Oct 27, 2021

শরীরচর্চাবিদদের স্মৃতি রক্ষা করার উপায় কি? যাঁরা গান-বাজনা করেন, ছবি আঁকেন বা তোলেন, তাঁদের স্মৃতি কিছু কাজের নমুনার মধ্যে অন্তত রয়ে যায়।

The Living Statue: Photographing Masculinity in a Body-Building Manual

Sujaan Mukherjee Sep 02, 2021

In Bengal, the early decades of the twentieth-century witnessed a rise in different strands of physical cultures. While some were professionalising older traditions of wrestling, others were drawing on indigenous practices of stick-fighting and fencing.

Capturing Line and Plane: Modernism in Architecture and Photography

Sukanya Baskar May 28, 2021

The modernist aesthetic within photography had existed for a while prior to the 1940s—in the clean lines and the highlighting of form through the stark play of light and shadow.

Building Modern India: Jeet Malhotra’s Photographs

Sukanya Baskar May 27, 2021

Tasked with documenting the ambitious Chandigarh project, a large number of Jeet Malhotra’s photographs from that period are now archived as a part of the Pierre Jeanneret fonds—a digitally accessible collection of the personal activities and professional practice of the architect.

A True Internationalist: An Encounter with Zia Qadri

Sukanya Baskar May 24, 2021

Born in Ahmedabad in 1916, Qadri was encouraged by his family at the age of fifteen to photograph the widely attended golden jubilee ceremony of the Maharaja of Baroda.

From Pictorialism to Realism: On Marg's 1960 Issue

Sukanya Baskar May 18, 2021

In an issue dedicated to photography from December 1960, Marg magazine featured a stellar line-up of photographers who contributed to the issue.

Nation-Building and Photography: Marg Magazine’s 1960 Issue

Sukanya Baskar May 17, 2021

The 1960 issue on photography by Marg magazine was titled after the exhibition Images of India, an oft-cited source within the study of photographic histories and practices in the subcontinent.

Social Media and Image-Making: In Conversation with Arko Datto

Sukanya Baskar Mar 30, 2021

Many of Arko Datto’s projects such as Captive Cams, Panopticams and Dinos of Hindostan—existing currently as images on his numerous Instagram handles—explore questions about image-making in the age of social media.

A Second Coming: Arko Datto Discusses Dinos of Hindostan

Sukanya Baskar Mar 29, 2021

In Dinos of Hindostan, Arko Datto deftly weaves elements of humour, science and current affairs to construct a world of uncanny political satire.

Portraits of Care: Revisiting Sanjeev Saith’s Happy Goodnight

Sukanya Baskar Mar 21, 2021

The photographer’s urge manifests in a series of colour photographs—shot on a mobile phone—appearing in an accordion fold that fits into the box.

Recalling AJ Patel: A Visionary in the World of Cinema and Photography

Sukanya Baskar Mar 06, 2021

Founded in 1932, Patel’s Central Camera Company started as a small store.

Reading a City: Images of Chennai in The Indian Defence

Sukanya Deb Dec 28, 2022

The Indian Defence is a video project by Katja Stucke and Oliver Sieber which captures Chennai through photographs and found images that speak to what constitutes a culture as well as the city’s positionality as a trading and manufacturing entity.

A Feminist Memory Project: Women in the Public Sphere

Sukanya Deb Dec 12, 2022

The Feminist Memory Project, curated by Diwas Raja KC and NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati of the Nepal Picture Library, details the public and political lives of women in Nepal in the twentieth century.

Encountering Violence: An Array of Loose Documents in 1528

Sukanya Deb Sep 08, 2021

In October 2016, photographer Rohit Saha journeyed to Imphal, Manipur, embarking on a project that would result in the photobook 1528.

Post-Industrial Loneliness: Through the Lens of Cat Sticks

Sukanya Deb Aug 11, 2021

In this interview, Ronny Sen speaks about his film Cat Sticks, its context and raising awareness about addiction.

The Figure and the Apparition: Mochu’s Reading of K. Ramanujam

Sukanya Deb Aug 07, 2021

Mochu's film A Gathering at the Carnival Shop ties together archival material in the form of photographs and drawings with interviews of close contemporaries and comrades of K. Ramanujam.

Performance and Evidence: The Heterogenous Image in Showgirls of Pakistan

Sukanya Deb Jul 31, 2021

In this continuing discussion on Saad Khan’s Showgirls of Pakistan, we look at how it reproduces the spectacle of 1980s Lollywood and the subsequent street and popular culture.

Glitz, Glamour and Guns: Codification of Gender in Showgirls of Pakistan

Sukanya Deb Jul 30, 2021

Showgirls of Pakistan, a documentary film by Saad Khan, introduces us to the contemporary world of Pakistani mujra through the performers Afreen Khan, Uzma Khan and Reema Jaan.

Traces of Occupation: Kashmir, A State of Erasure

Sukanya Deb Jun 06, 2021

“Trauma is viewed as pre-verbal and timeless—still and urgent,” reads the description of video works Nishan I (2007–12) and Nishan II (2019) by Desire Machine Collective.

Fragmenting Reality: An Abyss between the Virtual and the Physical

Sukanya Deb May 25, 2021

Mirroring the digital present, there is a dense, evolving set of information that one can extrapolate from Abyss. The nature of Cyriac’s project allows visual affect to create linkages for the viewer.

Constructing Archives of Community: Srinivas Kuruganti on 1980s California

Upasana Das Aug 14, 2024

In his photo book Pictures in My Hand of a Boy I Still Resemble (2024), Kuruganti creates a narrative of his time in California with his friends and partners. In a conversation with the author, Kuruganti recalls that at the time of making these images, he was not thinking as a ‘photographer’ and was not considering the images as documentation but a means to relive the past.

Documenting the Night: Shahbano Farid On Karachi’s Underground Music Culture

Upasana Das Jul 11, 2024

In this edited conversation, Shahbano Farid talks about the process of speaking with the artists and the histories of Karachi’s own music scene, which she attempts to capture in her documentary Karachi at Night (2024).

Music, Night, Life: In Conversation with Shahbano Farid

Upasana Das Jul 10, 2024

In her documentary Karachi at Night (2024), Shahbano Farid ventures into the underground music scene in Karachi, in conversation with musicians and DJs, and uncovers how this world functions even when it becomes difficult to thrive independently, while the fight to sustain the scene must always continue. In the first part of an edited conversation, Farid takes us through her motivations for documenting the nightlife and underground music subcultures in Karachi.

Re-Viewing Company Painting: Charan Singh’s Queer Lens

Upasana Das Jun 19, 2024

In his first solo exhibition, The Promise of Beauty, at The Art House, UK, Charan Singh reinterprets company paintings from a queer point of view. Often collaborating with his partner, the photographer Sunil Gupta, Singh works across photography, video and text.

Ghar: Home, Language and Landscape for Sonal Kantaria

Veeranganakumari Solanki Feb 08, 2023

In her treatment of the landscape as a site of reflection, “ghar” (home) for Sonal Kantaria becomes a language that allows for comfort, rest and care.

Listening to Landscapes: Sonal Kantaria on Photographing Western Australia

Veeranganakumari Solanki Feb 06, 2023

Sonal Kantaria’s doctoral research stemmed from looking at the Indian diaspora in Australia and subsequently shifted its focus to working with Aboriginal elders.

Building an Archive: The Confluence Collective on Retelling Histories

Veeranganakumari Solanki Jan 14, 2023

A six-member collective of photographers and researchers—consisting of Mridu Rai, Dipti Tamang, Ashwin Sharma, Shivam Darnal, Kunga Tashi Lepcha and Praveen Chettri—came together to form The Confluence Collective in 2020.

Between Stillness and Cacophony: Reading Sound in Light and Nature with Sarker Protick

Veeranganakumari Solanki Oct 31, 2022

Narrating the importance of light and sound in the installations Lohit (Origin), Rasmi, and O Great Life / অন্তঃশিরা, this conversation weaves its way into Sarker Protick's most recent works, A Study in Vastness.

A Trilogy of Time: Memory, Architecture and Landscape in Sarker Protick’s Images

Veeranganakumari Solanki Oct 29, 2022

In this conversation, Sarker Protick discusses three bodies of work, Mr. & Mrs. Das (জন ও প্রভার গল্প), Of River and Lost Lands, and জীর্ণ (Ruins), which he ties together as the Time Trilogy.

Hybridising Space: Ayesha Singh’s Image Making with Architecture

Veeranganakumari Solanki Jul 03, 2022

New Delhi-based artist Ayesha Singh’s architectural images are strongly rooted in her explorations with archives.

Columns and Facades: Photographs and Architecture with Ayesha Singh

Veeranganakumari Solanki Jul 02, 2022

In this video interview, the artist speaks about Appropriated and Distorted (2013), one of her earliest interventions of photographs in space, where the physical structure reinhabits and reclaims space in the form of a photograph.

Meanwhile…: Measuring Time with Karan Shrestha

Veeranganakumari Solanki Jun 23, 2022

For artist Karan Shrestha, time is a convoluted measure as encapsulated in his works that disarm the viewer’s understanding of stillness and passage.

An Unapologetic Mundane: Thinking about thinking with Sagar Chhetri

Veeranganakumari Solanki May 17, 2022

In this interview, Sagar Chhetri speaks about workshops and people who have inspired him over the years, and the way that inspired the two bodies of work he created in the midst of Nepal’s most stringent Covid-19 lockdown.

Deciphering Archives: Researching and Reading The Anglo-Indian Archives

Veeranganakumari Solanki Mar 29, 2022

A co-founder of The Anglo-Indian Archives, Thekkuveettil discusses the need to centre personal narratives while presenting alternative ways of reading archives.

The Anglo-Indian Archives: Methodologies for Creating Future History

Veeranganakumari Solanki Mar 28, 2022

The Anglo-Indian Archives was founded by photographers Dileep Prakash, Adira Thekkuveettil and Sheik Mohamed Ishaq in 2018.

1528 and the Malom Massacre: The Making of a Photobook with Rohit Saha

Veeranganakumari Solanki Mar 17, 2022

Rohit Saha’s first photobook 1528 took shape as a project he pursued as a student at the National Institute of Design and eventually turned into long-term research.

Anonya: Tayeba Begum Lipi’s Work with Dhaka's Transgender Community

Veeranganakumari Solanki Sep 30, 2021

One of the founding members of Dhaka’s Britto Arts Trust in 2002, Tayeba Begums Lipi’s work explores the body as a site—locating the performativity of gender within social expectations.

Attachments from Time: Lens and Gender in Tayeba Begum Lipi’s Practice

Veeranganakumari Solanki Sep 29, 2021

For Dhaka-based artist, Tayeba Begum Lipi, the various mediums she uses in her expansive practice have been a translation of her lived experiences.

Wandering the City: Farida Batool on History and Practice

Veeranganakumari Solanki Sep 24, 2021

For Lahore-based artist, Farida Batool, her city has been an integral part of her research and work.

Twisting with the Image: Farida Batool on Experiencing Photographs

Veeranganakumari Solanki Sep 23, 2021

Artist Farida Batool has been exploring the experience of the image and its movement through lenticular prints or 3D holographic photographs since 2006.

Noise: Resistance in Mithila Jariwala’s Images

Veeranganakumari Solanki Sep 15, 2021

In Mithila Jariwala’s series, Noise (2018–ongoing), the sound evokes the emotions that drive her intimate image-making practice.

Song Narratives: Molla Sagar’s Documentary Films

Veeranganakumari Solanki Jun 25, 2021

Inspired by Ritwik Ghatak’s cinematic ideologies, Molla Sagar’s work explores cultural and ethnic practices that speak about basic human rights and injustices in everyday encounters.

Family Threads: Yasmin Jahan Nupur’s Relationship with Practice

Veeranganakumari Solanki Jun 23, 2021

An interdisciplinary artist based in Dhaka, Yasmin Jahan Nupur’s works traverse performance, video, sound, photography, textile, embroidery and drawing.

New Discoveries: On Himali Singh Soin’s we are opposite like that

Veeranganakumari Solanki Jun 20, 2021

Himali Singh Soin’s we are opposite like that (2017–ongoing) is an interdisciplinary work that takes its viewers on an expedition for new discoveries.

Journeying the Mississippi: Sohrab Hura’s The Levee

Veeranganakumari Solanki Jun 17, 2021

On an invitation from American artists and photographers Alec Soth and Jim Goldberg, Sohrab Hura set out on a road trip in April 2016.

Consolidating Political Cultures: Majoritarianism in the Agrarian North

Vishal Singh Deo Sep 24, 2024

The anonymous faces that mark the jobless youth in India have now assumed a far right socio-political character as the nation’s youth have become an informal ally to the disruptive developmentalist experiments occurring in what was once the agrarian hinterland.