Presents
Unframed
Discovering Image Practices in South Asia
Edited by
Rahaab Allana
Published by HarperDesign
672 pp | Rs 1999 |January 2023
The first ever Reader on photography in South Asia, brimming with a diverse array of international authors, artists, critics, historians and scholars.
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Unframed presents some of the complex dimensions of South Asia-oriented lens-based media, specifically tracing the evolution of photography in the subcontinent from the nineteenth century to the present. Through intersecting trajectories, thirty-one texts, arranged in five distinct yet interdependent sections, examine the general history/particular meta-histories of the medium in our region, reflecting the depth of image practices in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar.
Drawing upon the broader arc of South Asian visual cultures, this collection/reader analyzes emergent themes, testimonies and socio-cultural shifts through key discussions around the invention, application and consequent proliferation of lens-based work. Seminal analyses revised for this volume, as well as new commissioned essays and a set of interviews with practitioners/curators collectively explore the subtle entanglements of memory and space; notions of selfhood; the blurring of geographic taxonomies; the edicts of the gaze; the rupture of identity; varied dimensions of mirroring/othering; and the unstable politics of etching moments in time.
Unframed thereby turns a critical eye upon lyrical and evidentiary frameworks, challenging the obduracy of our narrative positions and the conditioned habits of viewing that reinforce our intractable claims to know ‘who’ and ‘where’ we are. These pages offer fresh insights into how our analogue, digital and other hybrid technologies compel us to confront any monolithic history of photography by working through the multiplicity of facts and the singularity of truth.
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Talking about the book, Rahaab Allana says ‘the conceptualization of Unframed rests largely on my role as archivist-curator-custodian of an image archive, but also research that requires continual reflection on the processes of selection, aggregation, re-classification and the preservation of images. I continually marvel at image practices in South Asia which make me think about arts chronologies, new mappings and subjectivities across our region.’
Bonita Vaz-Shimray, Art Director and Publisher – HarperDesign, adds ‘we are delighted to co-publish this essential reader with the Alkazi Foundation for Arts, a collection of newly commissioned and revised essays as well as recent interviews on the visual sociology of South Asia. Since its inception, the Foundation has been committed to sourcing, archiving and exhibiting early, modern and contemporary histories of lens-based media in the subcontinent and this meticulously curated volume strengthens that legacy.’
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ABOUT THE EDITOR
Rahaab Allana is Curator/Publisher, Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, New Delhi. A Charles Wallace grant awardee and Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, he received his MA in Art History from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London and was brie‑y Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Visual Anthropology at University College, London. He is Founding Editor of PIX, a themed digital publication that focuses on South Asian lens-based practices and production, and Founder of ASAP|Art (Alternative South Asia Photography/Art), the region’s first app for presentation and discussion of contemporary creative work. Allana works nationally and internationally with museums, archives, cultural initiatives and institutions, universities and festivals. He recently served as Guest Editor for a Delhi-themed issue of Aperture (Summer 2021). He is on the editorial board of Trans-Asia Photography, the advisory committees of the India-Europe Foundation for New Dialogues (Rome), and the Arts and Culture committee, Asia Society (India).
CONTRIBUTORS
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For reviews, excerpts, interviews, and more information, please write to me at nandini.tripathi@harpercollins.co.in; +91-9718928839.
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