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Typeset in Mango © 2020
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What We Want to See, When We Say India


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RISD Spring 2020
Advised by Christopher Sleboda and Kathleen Sleboda 

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Zine with a collection of photographs that represents a western gaze — the trope of a grainy, broken and vintage India inhabited by chaos

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Result of a day spent at the RISD Fleet Library digging into photography archives and photo books about South Asia

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“Owing to the British, India dropped from representing 23% of the global GDP to representing 4%. After much growth and development, why do we still want to see the image of India as a poor yet exotic third world country? I won’t lie, I too was drawn to the aesthetic, partly because many parts of India do have this instagrammable grainy filter but the saturation of this imagery and the intention behind its creation has done little to help the identity of a vast and complex country and the representation of a culture and its people across diverse experiences of colorism, casteism and other socio-economic divisions. However, when South Asians themselves cash in on this aesthetic and adopt a self-exoticizing colonial gaze, it makes one question the terms on which one performs one’s identity.”

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Zine 
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What We Want to See, When We Say India


1


RISD Spring 2020
Advised by Christopher Sleboda and Kathleen Sleboda 

2

Zine with a collection of photographs that represents a western gaze — the trope of a grainy, broken and vintage India inhabited by chaos

3
Result of a day spent at the RISD Fleet Library digging into photography archives and photo books about South Asia

4
“Owing to the British, India dropped from representing 23% of the global GDP to representing 4%. After much growth and development, why do we still want to see the image of India as a poor yet exotic third world country? I won’t lie, I too was drawn to the aesthetic, partly because many parts of India do have this instagrammable grainy filter but the saturation of this imagery and the intention behind its creation has done little to help the identity of a vast and complex country and the representation of a culture and its people across diverse experiences of colorism, casteism and other socio-economic divisions. However, when South Asians themselves cash in on this aesthetic and adopt a self-exoticizing colonial gaze, it makes one question the terms on which one performs one’s identity.”

⬤
Zine