On a particularly windy afternoon in Madurai, I stand at the edge of the road, dust blowing in my face. The rainy season has yet to come, but without the rains, the dust never turns to mud. It collects itself from kilometers around, finding a way to take over, and spill into my eyes with little effort. For the next few days, I will walk around with one eye closed because the dust, wedged into the tiniest crevices of my eyeball, has led to a total shut down of my right eye. This doesn’t change the course of my step or the flow of my movement however; my right eye has been practically useless for years. Following a number of unfortunate illnesses and medical procedures, my right eye has slowly decayed into something that exists on my face but does not serve me much vision. I realize I hardly ever notice this disability anymore as I am standing in the dust, one eye open and one eye closed.
The normalcy behind this partial loss of vision has led me to an overwhelming mistrust of visuals. Parts of my brain and eyes, damaged for a number of reasons out of my control, still manage to create an image of life in front of me that feels exceptionally ordinary. Nothing is distorted, everything is in its place. Occasionally, I bump into a wall on my right side. But we can blame that on me being clumsy, an art I have perfected. My blindness has taught me that seeing is not believing, seeing is deception. Countless tests, scans, tears, fears, surgeries, and doctor’s visits have all shown me the data needed to prove that a large majority of my vision is gone—and yet, I still feel like I can see everything. I have always found this to be odd.
My curiosity behind this deception of my vision brought me to a peculiar interest in photography. Behind the lens, I had two, full eyes. What a camera could show me contrasted with what my vision had told me, and so I began to take photos of everything. My broken shoes, my grandfather’s tangerine peels, my brother making strange faces while reading a book about a cat who loved pizza. Nothing was left unnoticed by my camera. It became the only way I could check if I was really “seeing” the world.
There are so many diverse, specific stories in every place I’ve ever been. Each of these stories can be found in each person and each tree and each rock and even in each gust of wind that carries this dust into my eyes. And yet, when photographed, I can make them speak any single narrative of my choosing. I can even make them tell stories they don’t want to tell. Behind a camera, I am able to produce the eyesight that I have lost. Everything I photograph thus becomes a testimony to my eyesight; proof that I can still “see” even when I cannot. Photography gives me an imagination of life that appears full, but this sight of fullness is ultimately artificial. It is a lie. The reality of my life is that of partial blindness—the camera and the photos I produce each lure me into believing that I can see the full picture. But we all know that I can’t. The history of my poor vision has now lent me to a less than innocent understanding of photography. Photography has become a tool of power and control for me, and it is for this reason alone that I bear so much scrutiny over photographic displays of South Asia.
As I walk along the edge of the road with one eye open and one eye closed, I think about those who have previously photographed this place in ways that have stripped it of its voice and turned it into a circus-playground where people aren’t really people at all. In these photographs, people become nothing more than passive objects of a fantasy produced by colonial Europe, choreographed through the personal desires of imperialism, and transformed into photographs that became “proof” of the fantasy. Photographs are ultimately colonial Europe’s finest magic trick—they are rational pieces of evidence that can also be severely distorted by the conductor of the experiment. But no one would ever realize this unless they distrusted a capture of reality. No one would ever question their sight unless they knew the history behind the lens.
Photography was invented at the zenith of British colonial rule in South Asia, and the photographs of the colonies by Europeans at this time descend from histories of insecurities and desires to purge the world of what Europe considered to be their “primitive,” “backwards” past. These racist undertones were overtly expressed in colonial photography of the colonized, where the camera allowed Europeans to prove their own ideas about “The Other” through photographs, realistic images that made people in Europe—and even in the colonies—believe and internalize fantasies that justified tremendous long-term violence. Even just briefly taking a look at colonial photography shows us how colonial powers perceived Black and Brown bodies around the world. Many of these photos were staged or taken off guard in order to showcase how utterly appalling the colonized could be. I will not be displaying any of these images here because I do not believe in presenting humiliating and dehumanizing photos of Black and Brown people just to prove my point. But do know and remember that, through photography, subjects of the colonies became objects of passivity, promiscuity, desire, humor, threat, discomfort, pain, and embarrassment. Things to geek and squawk at. Strange little oddities that did unimaginable things to and with their bodies. Fiends that lived in ways that were prohibited to an average European at that time. And yet, the colonizers couldn’t get enough of us.
So, along with the stolen wealth of the world, colonial Europe also brought home these types of photographs to their families. They looked at their colonies’ bizarre beasts with repulsion—but also with desire. Almost immediately after viewing these photographs, people in Europe believed what they saw in these small little larger-than-life images, and these photographs began to shape and control what they thought of “The Other.” They hungrily consumed those in the colonies through staged photographs of European fantasies, never questioning if what they saw was even remotely artificial. They were taught to hate these backwards people in the photographs, and yet, they craved the cultures, clothes, and art traditions they were newly exposed to. These cravings led to the mass production of European-imagined aesthetics of the Orient to fulfil consumers’ desires to decorate Europe with what they deemed to be “tasteful arts” of the East. A gorgeous, sexy, beautiful, exotic dance of capitalism and colonial fantasy was born, and so now—and for the rest of my god damn freaking life—I am cursed to look at every photograph of anything related to South Asia and question whether or not it casts a shadow of colonial violence.
Imagining India in the digital age has therefore been on my mind, eating away at my eyesight more and more every day, asking me to close both eyes instead of just one. Although I am a big fan of digital archives for my own research, I remain critical of the ways we produce an imagination—and even a fantasy—of India for ourselves and others. In the last few years, we have seen the rise of those of South Asian descent in the diaspora posting visuals on various social media sites of what we deem to be representative of a collective “South Asian” identity. Every time I see these types of posts, I find myself returning to the discourses about horrific repercussions produced by colonial European photographs that projected personal fantasies upon South Asia. I feel uneasy seeing South Asians with no connection to specific communities’ cultures dawning traditions these communities have venerated, inherited, and safeguarded for generations. And to see this happening through photography means these inaccurate portrayals of who gets to adorn themselves with what are being memorialized through realistic visuals that allows easier access for an audience to buy into the fantasy.
It is important to note here that the trends of which are appearing on social media are almost always coming from what we see in photographs of Adivasi, Dalit, and/or LGBTQ+ communities, communities that have been historically isolated from and oppressed by our societies—particularly by those of wealthier statuses and/or upper castes. While these communities are marginalized for their heritage and identity, those with access and privilege wear or post images of these communities’ emblems as trends for a quick photograph that often delivers them capital for “representing” South Asians. Meanwhile, those of whom created these ornaments are forgotten and never even credited or compensated. These visual posts on social media ultimately just reproduce colonial fantasies and repulsions of “The Other” by robbing cultural heritage from particularly ostracized peoples within South Asian communities and then using their cultural wealth to satisfy our own cravings for what we want to imagine South Asia to be. These social media photographs have also produced an escapist imagination that there is a collective South Asian identity—one that forgets that we are all caught in our own webs of power and privilege and aims to blend us all into one identity that dehistoricizes violence, heritage, capital, and power.
In addition to this, and perhaps what I am more personally concerned with, is the budding emergence of social media archival spaces. These accounts post photographs of marginalized communities and people they have never interacted with alongside captions that speak with authority over the lives of “The Other.” These posts almost only highlight the aesthetic value of people, but never seem to render the individuals in these photographs as autonomous beings worthy of representing themselves. They are just displayed as artwork and objects of consumption for those of us in the diaspora. Some of these accounts have even begun posting photographs of these communities under a guise of “bringing awareness” to multiple issues of oppression in the subcontinent. I watch—with both eyes, as much as possible—as these accounts reproduce colonial photography in an online, museum-like fashion, where power and authority is never given to the person in the photograph. Instead, these people and their communities are reduced to what we photograph and what we want them to be. Are they just visuals and aesthetics to us? Moments of brief pleasure that allow us to feel empowered in our abstract “collective” South Asian identity? Do we remember the people in the photographs beyond our momentary gaze? Like the colonizers, we have turned these people into passive objects and imprisoned them within the boundaries of a photograph that controls and narrates their lives for and to them. We should all be—collectively—ashamed.
When I use photography as a tool for my own research in South Asia, I keep this ongoing violent history of photography in mind. It’s challenging to come up with new techniques and imaginations for capturing the world I see when so many of the “rules” we are taught about photography have been unquestioningly dictated by Western standards of aesthetics. But giving images to the work I do is inevitable—I study my community’s contributions to visual and performing arts in South Asia—how can I document my research without providing visual aids? For now, I just stick to posting photos of myself, my friends, and my family—all people I know well and have developed relationships with that transcend the scope of my research.
As I walk down the side of the road with one eye open and one eye closed, I notice that I have suddenly received hordes of notifications from my friends and family on WhatsApp. The first few notifications are selfies from my best friend who lives in another part of India; he is drinking room temperature whiskey mixed with water while dogpiled on top of his drunk roommates. The next few notifications are from my family members; they contain screenshots of Wikipedia pages, chain messages, and glittery colorful gifs of gods and goddesses. Finally, the last few notifications are from my friends in the United States; they consistently send me the most up-to-date memes as soon as they wake up. I scroll through each photo, looking at my phone with both eyes open—the most authentic way I can see home.