Camera South Asia
Camera South Asia is a collaboration between Rahaab Allana of the Alkazi Foundation in New Delhi and Debashree Mukherjee at Columbia University. It was launched in 2023 with a symposium in New York featuring artists, scholars, and curators. Our goal has been to critically assess the histories and futures of South Asian lens-based practice, thereby opening up many forgotten, vexed, or overlooked trajectories of lived life in the region.
South Asia Across Oceans
In 2023 we had the ready context of two new books on photography that allowed us to have a conversation across historical and contemporary photographic practices. In 2024, we broadened the conversation into the spaces of the diaspora. With a special focus on the Indian Ocean archipelago nation of Mauritius, we discussed the relation between aesthetics and politics, migration and memory. Sheba Chhachhi’s opening talk set the tone for our attempts to unsettle easy ascriptions of identity or authenticity, be it for individuals or for images.
In 2024 we had the generous support of the Murthy Nayak Foundation at a very challenging time for the Columbia campus. We were also fortunate to have the support of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church who hosted us at the last minute as a sanctuary space.