Amarnath Praful’s project investigates the inextricable link between Indian Ocean studies and the material, sociological, representational and labour histories of colonial photography in the subcontinent. Focusing on three distinct and interconnected sites – the port as a portal; the ship as icon, architecture, spectacle and metaphor; and the seascape as absence/erasure of the political, Praful hopes to examine 19th and 20th-century photographs of India in the V&A collections, considerin...
