Access Time: Photography and its Many Archives

Sabih Ahmed is a Senior Researcher at AAA, and has been a member of Asia Art Archive’s Research+ team since 2009. Stationed in New Delhi, he has overseen the Archive’s digitization projects in the country alongside other research initiatives. Ahmed completed the interdisciplinary MA program at the School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi in 2009, and has organized and participated in numerous conferences and workshops internationally.

Sooni Taraporevala is an Indian photographer, screenwriter and filmmaker who is best known for her screenplays of Mississippi Masala, The Namesake, the Oscar--‐nominated Salaam Bombay & the national award winning Little Zizou. In 2000 and 2004 she authored and published a book of her photographs Parsis: The Zoroastrians of India; A Photographic Journey, which was a critical and popular success. Sooni's photographs have been exhibited around the world and are in the permanent collections of NGMA, New Delhi and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She has won numerous national and international awards for her screenplays and film. She was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2014.

Anusha Yadav is a Portrait Photographer, Design consultant and a curator of visual based archives and histories. She graduated in Communication Design from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad in 1997. Anusha also began working as an independent photographer in 2006. With a 20 year career in graphic design and advertising in tow, her images and related works have been published and exhibited in India, Austria, Spain, France, Germany, China, UK, Singapore, South Africa & USA. In 2010, Anusha founded Indian Memory Project – The world’s first online visual & narrative based archive, to trace a personal history of the Indian Subcontinent through images found in family and personal archives. The project has been cited as exemplary around the world, and has pioneered an alternate method in which narratives of the world are curated, told and understood. In 2013, she founded The Memory Company, a creative consultancy that works on international and national cultural & contemporary design and curatorial projects, online archives and offline exhibitions related to history, and popular culture. In 2015, the company curated its first narrative and image based exhibit on historical criminal investigations from India – ‘The Photograph is Proof’ at the Format International Photography Festival, 2015 – United Kingdom. In August of 2015, she was invited by The New Yorker to showcase Indian Memory Project on Instagram. In inclusion to being a speaker on several esteemed panels around the world, Anusha has been awarded the ‘Honorary mention’ at the Prix Ars Electronica 2013 awards, an international award for excellence in Cyber Arts & online Media, the L’oreal Paris Femina Women Achievers’ Award 2013 and the Innovator of the Year – India Today Women’s Summit, 2014.

Mortimer Chatterjee received his postgraduate art history degree from SOAS, London. Having worked in the UK with an important collection of Indian photography, he moved to India to pursue his interest in modern and contemporary Indian art. In 2003, he and his wife, Tara, began Chatterjee & Lal. Today based in Mumbai’s art district, the gallery program is focused both on the work of emerging artists and historical material. Over the last thirteen years, the gallery program has formed an important node in the city’s maturing art scene. Chatterjee has been published widely in art publications and lectures frequently.