As part of MAP’s ongoing theme, Art is Life, we are pleased to present an illustrated presentation by Bakirathi Mani on her new book Unseeing Empire: Photography, Representation, South Asian America. The discussion that followed with Annu Palakunnathu Mathew focuses on her series An Indian from India, also featured in the book.

Mani’s book and the talk discusses how the histories and images of empire haunt contemporary visual culture, how we visualise ourselves through this visual culture and how this in turn informs and shapes racial identities and communities. Examining, in particular, the experience of the South Asian diaspora in America, the session explores how photography functions as recorded history, how we look to it for the representation of our lives and how it can make visible certain stories of the empire.