In an attempt to keep our content accurate and representative of evolving scholarship, we invite you to give feedback on any information in this article.

    This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.


    ARTICLE

    Indian Memory Project

    Map Academy

    Articles are written collaboratively by the EIA editors. More information on our team, their individual bios, and our approach to writing can be found on our About pages. We also welcome feedback and all articles include a bibliography (see below).

    Founded in 2010 by photographer Anusha Yadav, Indian Memory Project is an online archive of photographs and narratives sourced from the personal archives of Indians, largely run out of Mumbai, though it does not have a permanent physical presence. The Project is an ongoing initiative and promotes the idea of openness, access and the sharing and restoration of collective memory.

    Yadav initially started the Project as a blog, which soon gained traction in the press and began to grow through crowdfunding and the contributors of friends and patrons. The visual archive’s underlying narrative soon became a repository of various traditions, lifestyles and social situations. The project operates on empathy and captures the tangible and the intangible cultural heritage of Indian society through a collection of over three hundred visual narratives, predominantly in sepia and black-and-white. It encourages individuals to share photographs and documents made within the subcontinent from before 1992. Once the contributors share their collections, the team carries out a rigorous fact-checking and translation process.

    Related to her work on the Project, Yadav, in 2015, curated the exhibition The Photograph is Proof at the Format International Photography Festival, Derby, UK, presenting a history of criminal investigations in the Indian subcontinent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through archival photographs. In its current form, the Project reaches a global audience and allows access to heritage material that would otherwise be stored and locked in institutional archives.

     
    Bibliography

    “About Us.” n.d. Indian Memory Project. https://www.indianmemoryproject.com/about/

    “About” n.d. Anusha Yadav. https://anushayadav.com/about/

    Alexander, Deepa. 2020. “Indian Memory Project: Time travel through the history of a nation” The Hindu https://www.thehindu.com/society/history-and-culture/indian-memory-project-time-travel-through-the-history-of-a-nation/article32908170.ece

    Almeida, Rhea. 2015. “Telling India’s Story Through Pictures: The Indian Memory Project”. The Quint https://www.thequint.com/news/india/the-human-side-of-history-anusha-yadavs-indian-memory-project

    Behal, Ambika. “The Innovative Business Of The Indian Memory.” Forbes, August 31, 2015. https://www.forbes.com/sites/abehal/2015/08/31/the-innovative-business-of-the-indian-memory/?sh=3a7f2ae11e22

    Dharmadhikari, Aditi. 2017. “Indian Memory Project: A Trip Down Collective Memory Lane with Anusha Yadav”. https://homegrown.co.in/article/20038/indian-memory-project-a-trip-down-collective-memory-lane-with-anusha-yadav

    Gaekwad, Manish. “This girl digs history.” Deccan Herald, April 11, 2014. https://www.deccanherald.com/content/398415/this-girl-digs-history.html

    Muller, Katja. “Postcolonial digital collections: Indian examples” Proceedings. Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany https://www.zirs.uni-halle.de/pdc-proceedings/contribution-katja-mueller

    Safi, Michael. 2017. “India’s Partition: People in their Final Years are Desperate to Open Up” The Guardian

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/05/india-partition-people-in-final-years-desperate-open-up

    Sorabji, Deepika. “Archiving through personal records with an interface like Facebook has made old world come alive.” The Economic Times, May 08, 2012. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/archiving-through-personal-records-with-an-interface-like-facebook-has-made-old-world-come-alive/articleshow/12958542.cms

    Yadav, Anisha. “All Photographs are Personal: Indian Memory Project.” Photography and Culture, August 4, 2020. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17514517.2020.1778958?journalCode=rfpc20&

    Feedback
     
     
    Related Content
    loading