All Grants | Cycle 3 –
Sudeshna Rana is an independent writer, editor and researcher based in India, working in print and digital publishing. In 2022, she won the South Asia Speaks literary fellowship in creative non-fiction to investigate Dhanbad, a mining town where she grew up. She is the co-founder ofPoorvanchal aur Palayan, an online archive on migration in and around East India, supported by the 2023 Serendipity Arts Virtual Grant. Her current research interests focus on digital humanities and visual culture. Her first short story on female friendship appeared in Yaari: An Anthology on Friendship by Women and Queer Folx (Yoda Press, 2023). She is working on her first book-length work.
* This research grant was supported by Dayanita Singh. It is for a researcher residing in India and addressing the history of the photobook in India.
Links
Profile / Research Links
Sudeshna Rana’s Website
Publication Links
Yaari: An Anthology on Friendship by Women and Queer Folx (Yoda Press, 2023)
Other Links
10×10 Research Grant Presentation Video (Sudeshna Rana—00:05:38)
Summary of Research Supported by 10×10 Photobooks Grant:
Visualising the Post-Digital Photobook: Studying the Influence of Global Digital Cultures on the Medium, Patronage and Accessibility of the 21st Century Photobook in South Asia
Supported by the third cycle of the 10×10 Photobook History Research Grant in 2024-25, this project—collaboratively designed and led by Sudeshna Rana and Rini Rayna, began with the aim of contributing to the global photobook community from the South Asian perspective via an interdisciplinary lens.
By drawing upon personal experiences and examining photographic publishing practices in South Asia, the ongoing project frames the duo’s shared interest in the evolution of the photobook at a time when Big Tech is monetising attention spans and commodified lifestyles.
Over the course of one year, free-flowing and semi-structured online interviews with photographers, book-makers, archivists, visual artists, editors, designers, independent publishers, curators, and image-based practitioners shaped our understanding. The grant helped facilitate visits to archives, photobook libraries, workshops, virtual and in-person talks, exhibitions, conferences and book launches (albeit, only in Indian metropolitan regions, pointing towards a dearth of such cultural events in semi-urban and rural spaces in India). For tracing the photobook ecosystem outside India, mainly digital ethnographic methods were used, except in a few cases (again, pointing towards the vastness of the landscape and the various nuances, yet to be explored).
As we formulated our analysis of the prospects, experiences, challenges and visions concerning the photobook format within the context of South Asia, the borders and divisions proved to be a constant impediment in the developing countries of the region, rife with linguistic, ethnic, class, caste, gender, religious and other structural inequalities.
To reject the prevalence of hegemonic powers and stereotypes (racial, gender-based and otherwise), the study also included lesser-known voices. Thereby, findings were collated by examining the works of both established and emerging practitioners. For example, the answer to a conversation-starter question, “What was your first encounter with the photobook?” usually revealed the influence and prominence of photographic works from the Global North. At the same time, the so-called “vernacular” photographic aesthetic (implying a non-canonical status) has acquired a more mainstream adoption in the region. The sheer diversity of the peoples, histories, and their cultural legacies has led to a bricolage of themes being explored through the photobook medium.
Given that publishing and photography have been historically practised and patronised in the region mainly amidst the privileged elite and Western imperialists, the photobook has surfaced as a relatively more democratic and decolonial medium. While valid criticisms exist in the propagation of an exclusionary silo of maker-centric echo-chambers, it has also led to rethinking a more sustainable channel for distribution and circulation away from mass media.
The contemporary photobook ecosystem thrives on the fluidity of the form by blending various other creative genres such as documentary, literature, performance, architecture, and design, along with an expanding sense of community, resistance and social change. There is a growing relevance of the South Asian photobook in the face of state-sponsored censorship, internet shutdowns, and volatile cultural/ media infrastructures. The connection between photobook practitioners’ lived experiences also revealed the shortcomings and possibilities for expanding accessibility for new readerships in an image-driven society, surrounded by media illiteracy, market logic and data algorithms.
The widespread fetishisation of colonial-era visual and material culture reveals a glaring lack of documentation about the evolution of the post-digital era photobook as an artistic and literary form, its relevance in the South Asian techno-cultural landscape and the economics involved in its production and consumption. The ‘valorisation of the subcontinent’s past’ through the visual medium has further been exacerbated by the emergence of decontextualised archives that continue to evoke the colonial past. However, parallel to these practices, individuals and collectives have adopted new narratives and lenses for recording and documenting images and sharing alternate forgotten histories.
The deep fissures in South Asian society, where a majority of the population is facing economic and ecological crisis, became more and more apparent during our year-long research initiative. The research had to undergo constant calibration in response to our generation’s first livestreamed genocide in West Asia against the Falastin, student-led people’s uprisings in Bangladesh and Nepal, and the Indo-Pak military hostilities following an attack on civilians in Occupied Kashmir.
The post-digital era is thus a critical juncture in the South Asian photographic landscape, replete with opportunities for photographers, photobooks and new allied scholarship to emerge.
Through the photobook format, photographic practitioners and image-makers have assumed greater agency in their lives and practices while adopting diverse roles, as artists, writers, archivists, curators, editors, activists, and publishers. The contemporary photographic practice in the subcontinent now encompasses photo books, online and offline bookshops, pop-up/mobile libraries, curation and exhibition of personal and private archives, both digital and physical, residencies, traditional coffee table books, magazines and social media feeds. The availability of digital technologies and gadgets has increased awareness in the South Asian region about global photographic networks and resources, both digital and analogue, redefining photobook culture and hopefully making it more accessible in the future.
In conclusion, the grant has led us to rethink, ‘What do we talk about when we talk about the photobook?’ and draw attention to ‘How can we envision the future of photobook cultures in South Asia?’