Nandy’s observation about the productivity of the past provides a frame to position several contemporary photographic practitioners who have performed representations through diverse idioms which have recently been termed “postdating”. Approaching work by Pushpamala N, Waswo X. Waswo, Olivier Culmann, Gauri Gill, Suresh Punjabi, Naresh Bhatia and Cop Shiva this talk explores deliberately belated copies and strategies of de-synchronization which split open the past, exploring an “evasive” doubled time, in order to complicate the future.
Christopher Pinney is Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at University College London. He is the author of Photography and Anthropology (Reaktion, 2011) and (together with the photographer Suresh Punjabi) Artisan Camera: Studio Photography from Central India (Tara Books 2013). He was awarded a Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2013.