We are inviting abstract submissions for an edited collection on photography in India (Editors: Aileen Blaney and Chinar Shah)

India’s rapid urban and rural transformation in recent years is synchronous with changes in photographic practice, with the medium oftentimes being pushed to breaking point in order to talk about the problems of India. Far from the much-hyped death of photography, a new generation of photographers are making images – without precedence in the earlier traditions of documentary and photojournalism practised by their forerunners – that form part of a new terrain of photography in India today. Here and elsewhere, there has been a shift in emphasis from that of taking photographs to making images, from chemistry and light to programming and algorithms. Cameraless photography is gaining ground globally and yet there is renewed demand in countries across Europe and Asia for analogue technology. A subsequent proliferation in the supply of images, allied with an expanded range in image-making technologies and photo-sharing platforms are indicative of the scope of photography in India today, and provide a lens through which to gauge its possible futures. Thoughtful and imaginative exploration of developments and issues related to photography in the context of India is urgently needed so as to connect the field with a level of critical reflection that hitherto has been largely absent.

This publication will open up new dialogues around photography in India, exploring its present and future through a range of theoretical, visual and critical frameworks.

We welcome proposals from scholars, researchers and practitioners that may include but are not limited to the following themes:

– Incredible India – images producing the nation
– Vernacular photography in India – from family album to the selfie
– The right approach to photography in contemporary India
– Dalit camera
– Coding behaviour in a time of social media updates
– Postconflict portraiture: photojournalism’s reenactment of the victim
– The image and the state: technologies of control
– Exiled images
– A poverty of images – NGO portrayals of India
– The politics of representation: transformations at the level of the national in India today
– Postdigital landscapes in Indian photography
– Representing the farmer, the farmhouse and farmlands
– Food images from the menu card to instagram
– The digital turn: new expressive possibilities for photography?
– Photography after photography: the image gone mobile
– Post-internet photographic practices
– Reconfigurations of time and space in digital imagery
– Conceptual and ideological bases of early photography in India
– Photography and its democratisation in studio portraiture
– What is the nation in Indian contemporary photography?
– The gendered camera and censored body
– Domesticating the porn star
– The role of the photographic image in contemporary India

If you would like to propose a chapter please send a 750 word abstract and short bio to: Chinar Shah (photographer and faculty at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology)chinar21@gmail.com and Dr Aileen Blaney (Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology) aileen.blaney@srishti.ac.in

We have had a number of publishers express interest in the publication and will be able to share details soon. The deadline for receipt of all proposals is 20 June, 2015. We will attempt to notify all correspondents before July 1 regarding the status of their submission. Completed draft manuscripts of 5500-7000 words will be due by December 15, 2015.