Based on photographs taken by myself and others in the 1920s, the 1980s & 90s, and in 2017 in the Indian city of Jamnagar, this paper explores photography as both practice and representation, but also as a means of history-making and history-denying in the colonial and post-colonial state.
Paper long abstract:
Over the past thirty years I have been visiting the city of Jamnagar in western India. During the 1980s I took many photographs in the city and its inhabitants, and on a recent visit (February 2017) I asked some of my research informants from the 1980s what they thought about my photographs from that period. I also showed them a selection of images of the city taken in the 1920s. Finally, I observed and asked them about their own digital (camera phone) photographic practices today. My aim in the paper is to explore photography as both practice and representation, but more importantly as a means of history-making and history-denying in the colonial and post-colonial state.