Selections from An Indian From India (2001-2007), a photographic series by Annu Palakunnathu Matthew

Matthew describes the project in her artist statement:

As an immigrant, I am often questioned about where I am “really from.”  When I say that I am Indian, I often have to clarify that I am an Indian from India.  It seems strange that all this confusion started because Christopher Columbus thought he had found the Indies and called the native people of America collectively as Indians.

In this portfolio, I look at the other “Indian.” I play on my own “otherness,” using photographs of Native Americans from the Nineteenth Century and early Twentieth Century that perpetuated and reinforced stereotypes. I find similarities in how Nineteenth and early Twentieth century photographers of Native Americans looked at what they called the primitive natives, similar to the colonial gaze of the Nineteenth century British photographers working in India.

Like Pushpamala N., another performance photographer I greatly admire, Matthew illustrates the way that racial difference is visually constructed. This type of pseudo-ethnographic imagery is not so much about capturing cultural particularity, but establishing a sense of difference in relation to those who are taking the picture.