An Indian from India

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 indigenous of America collectively Indians.

In this portfolio, I look at the other “Indian.” I play on my own “otherness,” using photographs of the indigenous 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 the indigenous looked at what they called “the primitive natives,” similar to the colonial gaze of the Nineteenth century British photographers working in India.