Edinburgh Napier University

  This series explores the interface of photography and colonial history by examining how photo studio concepts and techniques of the colonial era influence the world of images in a postcolonial age. Contemporary South and Southeast Asian artists participated and reconfigured mannerisms, patterns and commonplaces of 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.