Edinburgh Napier University

  The series of works presented in this issue are both historical investigations and contemporary showcases of photo studio practices in South and Southeast Asia incorporating archival, material from the (colonial) past with the present day social and political contextualisation and exploring the process of cultural adaptation and adaptation of photographic portrait tradition by artists and photographers from both former colonised and coloniser countries.
Photography immediate embodiment with imperial project and the documentary realism claim of colonial photography provide historical and conceptual reflection for OJODPEZ, a dedicated platform for documentary photography. Studio portraiture was the first global photographic genre that was to actively involve colonial subjects. Portraits from colonies appeared as curiosity objects and studies for scientific enquiry. In the postcolonial era, the same portrait tradition became part and parcel of the new identity of independent society and caters the need of unifying national identity. The studio backdrop, for example, manifests the transformation of documentary realism of the colonial gaze to the postcolonial experiment with modernism.
This Postcolonial Photography issue explores the interface of photography and colonial history by examining how photo studio concept and technique in the colonial era influence the world of images in a ‘postcolonial’ age. Photographers and photography collective participated in this isssue contest and reconfigure mannerisms, patterns and commonplaces of photo studio tradition in their respective countries. They merge the colonial past with the postcolonial present by subverting and interrupting the integrity of the (colonial) archive as well as appropriating the use and truth-value of studio portraiture. Their works propose an expanded postcolonial archive that moves from archiving the past to re-imag(in)ing a postcolonial future.