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Experimental Image-making: Jagadish Upadhya's Collective of Film-based Photography

Anisha Baid Jan 18, 2021

Founded and run by photographer Jagadish Upadhya, Film Foundry is a collective concerned with alternative forms of photography on film.

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.

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.

Collaged Photographs: Selected Works of Rupesh Man Singh

Anisha Baid Feb 08, 2021

An artist and photographer based in Kathmandu, Rupesh Man Singh is part of the collective called Film Foundry which operates as a studio and a pedagogic space for the practice of analogue photographic processes.

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.

Cigarette Cards: Mapping Relations between Consumers, Colonialism and Trade

Ankan Kazi Feb 12, 2021

Tobacco companies often sought to create narratives through the cigarette card series they produced—whether locating them in the colonies or the metropolitan centers.

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.

Box Camera NOW: Lukas Birk’s Afghan Box Camera Project

Gulmehar Dhillon Feb 12, 2021

The Afghan Box Camera or “Kamra-e-Faoree” is a handmade device that acts as both an instant camera and a darkroom within one large contraption.

Alternative Photographic Processes: Being in a State of Salax

Hitanshi Chopra Feb 17, 2021

Being in State of Salax, a recent exhibition by the Bengaluru-based Kāṇike Collective, explored the interrelation between photography, archive and memory through alternative, analogue photographic processes.

Towards a Fugitive Photography: The Archives of Suresh Punjabi

Arushi Vats Feb 18, 2021

Founded by Suresh Punjabi in the late 1970s, Suhag Studio is located in the main street of Nagda Junction, a small town in Madhya Pradesh, India.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Person: Amarnath Praful on the Curricula for Lens-Based Practices

Editorial Mar 25, 2021

In the third episode of In Person, Amarnath Praful discusses the curricula for lens-based practices at the National Institute of Design.

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.

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.

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.

In Person: Varun Gupta on the Chennai Photo Biennale

Editorial Apr 03, 2021

In the fourth episode of In Person, Varun Gupta, the director of Chennai Photo Biennale discusses audience building and development through the biennale format.

Revisiting the Role of Women in Photography: The New Woman Behind the Camera

Sukanya Baskar Apr 06, 2021

The New Woman Behind the Camera is an upcoming travelling exhibition—set to open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in July—which explores how women emerged as a driving force in modern photography from the 1920s to the 1950s.

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.

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.

The Power of Moving Image: An Extract from Filmi Jagat

Editorial Apr 09, 2021

Filmi Jagat: A Scrapbook (Shared Universe of Early Hindi Cinema) was published by Niyogi Books in 2014 and presents the dynamic contours of graphic authorship by an elusive compiler, Mangaldas V. Lohana.

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.

Material Investigations: Selected Works of Arpan Mukherjee

Anisha Baid Apr 28, 2021

Arpan Mukherjee is an artist and educator working extensively with nineteenth-century photographic processes to address various contemporary socio-economic and political issues.

On Photographer-Soldiers: Looking at Images from Wartime Myanmar

Avrati Bhatnagar Apr 29, 2021

Photographic practice has been implicated in global wars since its inception. In fact, the earliest use of the camera on an international stage was carried out by Roger Fenton in 1855 to picture the consequences of the Crimean War in Europe.

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.

Of Resistance and Memory: Picturing the Mukti Bahini

Ankan Kazi May 10, 2021

The Mukti Bahini (Liberation Army) is a collection of military, paramilitary and civilian forces that fought in the struggle for the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

People of Sri Lanka: Lionel Wendt's Portraits

Anisha Baid May 19, 2021

Lionel Wendt was an important figure in the development of modern and contemporary art in Sri Lanka (erstwhile Ceylon) who carved an influential legacy as a photographer, concert pianist and critic in the early and mid-twentieth-century.

An Experiential Reality: Surrealism and Lionel Wendt

Anisha Baid May 20, 2021

In this continuing presentation of images from the book Lionel Wendt’s Ceylon—one of the few available collections of this pioneering photographer’s work—we consider the influence of surrealism, constructivism and larger modernist concerns visible in his compositions.

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.

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.

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.”

Nizamuddin at Night: Gauri Gill Photographs Her Neighbourhood

Gulmehar Dhillon May 31, 2021

Gauri Gill, the contemporary Indian photographer, has spent nearly two decades photographing life in the everyday.

A Quest for Dignity: The Dalit Experience in Nepal

Gulmehar Dhillon Jun 01, 2021

Edited by Diwas Raja Kc and produced by NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, the book (emerging from an exhibition in 2016) combines text with photographs to depict the brutality and structural injustice that the Dalit community has been subjected to over the course of Nepal’s history.

Informal Institutional Histories: Jyoti Bhatt’s Documentation of MSU Baroda

Samira Bose Jun 16, 2021

Artist and educator Jyoti Bhatt’s personal archive contains extensive documentation from his time as a teacher at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU) of Baroda.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Polycolonial Visions: The Photographs of Frederick Fiebig

Ankan Kazi Jun 29, 2021

Frederick Fiebig was an itinerant commercial lithographer and photographer who worked across a wide expanse of the colonial world in the nineteenth-century.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Explorations with the Human Body: Zia Qadri’s Tryst with Surrealism

Sukanya Baskar Aug 12, 2021

When the photographer Zia Qadri arrived in Los Angeles to join the Art Center School in 1940, there was another famed artist who arrived there. This was the Surrealist Man Ray.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In Person: Unsealed Chamber with Sukanya Baskar

Prabhakar Duwarah Nov 04, 2021

For the sixth episode of In Person we speak with scenographer Sukanya Baskar about Unsealed Chamber: The Transient Image, recently on view at Galerie Romain Rolland, Alliance Française, Delhi.

Revolution in a Family Album: Firouzeh Khosrovani’s Radiograph of a Family

Samira Bose Nov 11, 2021

Radiograph of a Family is the filmmaker’s personal foray into the shared lives and experiences of her parents reconstructed through fragments of family photographs and videos from public archives.

In Person: Material Scars with Asim Waqif

Prabhakar Duwarah Nov 16, 2021

For the seventh episode of In Person, we speak with Asim Waqif about his ongoing solo show, Material Scars, at Nature Morte, Delhi.

Concerning Photography: In Conversation with Brett Rogers and Sarah Turner

Arushi Vats Nov 25, 2021

In this episode of ASAP Cast, Arushi Vats speaks to Brett Rogers and Sarah Turner as they discuss how they conceptualised the structure of the conference titled Concerning Photography.

In Person: Tale of a City with Jagadish Upadhya

Yutsha Dahal Nov 29, 2021

For the eighth episode of In Person we speak with Jagadish Upadhya at the exhibition Tale of a City, currently on view at Siddhartha Art Gallery, Kathmandu.

Exhibitions as a Series of Statements: An Interview with David Bate

Sukanya Baskar Dec 01, 2021

In this interview with David Bate, we discuss the importance of the exhibition in fostering photographic interest, evolutions in its conception and the resultant changes in photographic pedagogy.

Material Media: Emergent Ontologies and Enquiries

Najrin Islam Dec 07, 2021

The panel, “Material, Process,” organised as part of the conference, Concerning Photography brought together curators working with the material medium of photography and its various extra-territorial iterations.

Objects of Discourse: Magazines, Books

Ankan Kazi Dec 08, 2021

The afternoon panel of the second day of the conference Concerning Photography was titled “Magazines, Books.” It addressed the impact of printed and digital media on photography cultures.

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.

Visibilities, Mobilities, Positionings: Photography Across Spaces of Exhibition

Annalisa Mansukhani Dec 13, 2021

The “Exhibitions and Touring” panel as part of the last day of the conference Concerning Photography brought together curators, writers and art historians who presented papers on key spaces of exhibitionary practice.

Impulses in Institutional Archives: A Panel Discussion on Archival Futures

Samira Bose Dec 14, 2021

Can the structure of archives contain, represent and render anti-institutional impulses and counter-cultural histories?

Swing Time: Ayisha Abraham’s Found Footage Movies and the Memory of a Medium

Ankan Kazi Jan 06, 2022

“Orbits of Desire” focused on the nature of media that informed image-making practices about the body, performances and gender.

On Proximity, Interstices and Observation: In Conversation with Arthur Crestani

Annalisa Mansukhani Feb 03, 2022

Arthur Crestani's documentary work Aranya is a study of the eponymous low-cost housing project conceived of by BV Doshi in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Twin Sisters with Cameras: The Photographic Archives of Lina-Bina

Najrin Islam Mar 19, 2022

The exhibition Twin Sisters with Cameras brings together the work of Manobina Roy and Debalina Mazumder, endearingly known by the moniker ‘Lina-Bina’.

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.

Making New Images: On the Exhibition Making a Photograph by Sunil Janah

Ankan Kazi May 05, 2022

Experimenter Gallery’s solo exhibition Making a Photograph featuring Sunil Janah’s post-independent industrial photographs carries forward the appropriation of Janah’s diverse contexts of photographic practice into the contemporary frameworks of art objectification in India.

Bearing Witness: On Prashant Panjiar’s Exhibition That Which is Unseen

Prabhakar Duwarah May 13, 2022

A selection of photographs from Prashant Panjiar’s latest book That Which is Unseen was presented as a solo exhibition at Museo Camera in March 2022.

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.

Town Boy: In Conversation with Sathish Kumar

Editorial Jul 10, 2022

Sathish Kumar’s analogue camera is his constant companion and together they picture the natural and peculiar unfolding of his everyday life. The resulting photo series, Town Boy, has thus been shot over a span of fifteen years.

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.

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.

Watching History Unfold: Photography’s French Connections in India

Annalisa Mansukhani Mar 01, 2023

Presenting a critical trajectory of the history of photography through its Franco-Indian intertwinings, the exhibition unfolded across timelines, personalities and themes.

Re-Mapping Photographic Histories: In Conversation with Christine Barthe and Annabelle Lacour

Arundhati Chauhan Jun 16, 2023

The exhibition attempts to present an expansive survey that aims to understand the many diverse ways photography developed as a medium, a vocation and a way of imaging the world.

Images in Transit: Bharat Sikka’s Waiting for Midnight

Santasil Mallik Jun 21, 2023

The work constitutes sixty photographs as an ode to the Goan village of Salvador do Mundo taken over the past fifteen years with a vintage Polaroid SX 70, reportedly the world's first instant SLR camera.

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.

Looking Inwards to the Future: In Conversation with Sukanya Ghosh

Ankita Ghosh Sep 25, 2023

In this edited excerpt, Sukanya Ghosh enumerates her fascination for all forms of bricolage, new experiments in opticality and the importance of looking inward in order to look forward towards the future.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Serendipity Arles Grant 2023-24: Image-Making as Social-Political-Personal Praxis

Arundhati Chauhan Dec 23, 2023

Spanning deeply personal narratives of memory, identity, migration and loss, the second iteration of the Serendipity Arles Grant for 2023-24 reflects the multivalent testimonials to image-making.

Conversations with the City: On Dreams of a Summer Past

Saloni Jaiwal Jan 16, 2024

Lens-based artists Indu Antony, Krishanu Chatterjee and Vivek Muthuramalingam trace episodes of their lives enmeshed with the city of Bengaluru in the recently concluded group exhibition Dreams of a Summer Past at Blueprint12, New Delhi.

Archiving the Corporeal: Zahra Yazdani’s Beautiful and Grotesque Bodies

Shankar Tripathi Feb 05, 2024

Scripted Selves: Sutures of Signs and Symbols, Zahra Yazdani's ongoing solo exhibition at Latitude 28 in New Delhi, is a hypnotic reimagination of the body as overridden with imperceptibility and fiction.

Ritual Purity, Reigning Pollution: On Hari Katragadda’s Lost River

Ankita Ghosh Feb 12, 2024

By directly working with water collected from the river and all that comes with it, Hari Katragadda leaves it open to viewers to piece together meanings—to connect the dots in thinking through purity, pollution, rituality, religion, ecological destruction and decay.

Upon Arrival: Image and Narrative in Sunil Gupta’s Come Out

Annalisa Mansukhani Feb 17, 2024

Exhibited at the contemporary art space of Vadehra Art Gallery in Defence Colony, New Delhi, Sunil Gupta’s Come Out brings together a series of black-and-white photographs taken in London between 1985 and 1995. They present a keen lens into the political presence of queerness, framed against the background of Margaret Thatcher’s England.

Expanded Cinemas, Archival Possibilities: Josef Wirsching and Early Film Histories

Arundhati Chauhan Mar 13, 2024

The archive presents larger questions around the photographic image, the visual influences in the staged images of the actors on set to the mise-en-scene captured by Wirsching, as well as questions of infrastructural archive building.

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.

Rituals for the Dead on the Seashore: Cassie Machado’s Afterlife

Pramodha Weerasekera Apr 04, 2024

Cassie Machado's series Afterlife (2011-16) is a haunting reminder of the deaths and disappearances that occurred throughout the Sri Lankan Civil war, purely through remnant belongings as survivor objects.

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.

Legacy Threads: Reading History through the NE India AV Archive

Ankita Ghosh May 14, 2024

Legacy Threads, a group exhibition presented by the Northeast India AV Archive and curated by D. Junisha Khongwir weaves together a story told through family photographs and community archives, and spotlights the vibrant history of the diverse communities based in the region.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Agile Images: Sieving History with Raghu Rai’s Photographs

Annalisa Mansukhani May 25, 2024

With its focus on Rai’s pre-digital photographs, the exhibition Raghu Rai: A Thousand Lives, Photographs from 1965–2005 portrayed the artist’s unmistakable fascination with the world and his deep spiritual belief of being and remaining “one with the camera.”

Leavening the Image: Reflections on Weather Report with Tenzing Dakpa

Annalisa Mansukhani Jun 21, 2024

In this edited interview, Tenzing Dakpa unpacks his process of making, his relationship to the medium of photography, and the kinds of mediations it continues to produce for him.

The Impulse to Remember: On Vikrant Kano’s In Search of Home

Annalisa Mansukhani Jun 29, 2024

In Search of Home (1939–2021) is a durational work by Delhi-based artist Vikrant Kano that gathers his family’s history, tracing a genealogy of trauma, violence, relocation and displacement back to the event of the Partition and its aftereffects.

The Spectral Archive: On Bombay Horror with Kartik Nair and Vibhushan Subba

Editorial Aug 10, 2024

ASAP | art hosted a discussion with Kartik Nair and Vibhushan Subba about the art and afterlife of Bombay horror films of the 1980s, where they discussed the secret histories contained within the spectral images of Bombay horror, and how popular images can be read as archives of their production, regulation, and circulation.

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.

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.

Modernity in Film/Photography: On Chitramahal

Ankita Ghosh Aug 20, 2024

C. Yamini Krishna, Sarah Niazi and Rutuja Deshmukh reframe the narrative around the history of photography to highlight the practices prevalent in princely states. In their recently concluded exhibition Chitramahal: Princely Encounters with Photography and Film, exhibited at Harkat Studios, Mumbai, with the support of the Indian Foundation for the Arts, the co-curators present rare photographs, film stills, advertorials and archival footage to turn their gaze to the visual culture from Jaipur, Indore, Kolhapur and Hyderabad.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In Person: O.P. Sharma and the Fine Art of Photography with Sukanya Baskar

Editorial Sep 28, 2024

In this episode of In Person, Sukanya Baskar walks us through the exhibition O.P. Sharma and the Fine Art of Photography (1950s-1990s), introducing the viewer to four decades of O.P. Sharma’s photographic practice and the different ways in which his work was crucial for the development of a culture of photography in post-independent India.

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.

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).

The Archive Activated: Annu Palakunnathu Matthew’s The Answers Take Time

Ankita Ghosh Nov 01, 2024

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew’s retrospective, The Answers Take Time, at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai from 14 September to 27 October, 2024, brought together a series of the artist’s body of work from nearly three decades of her practice. Curated by Esa Epstein, the exhibition showcased the wide range of experimental work that Matthew has dabbled with throughout her career.