Ananya Athaiya

My dissertation looks at photographs of Indian migrants from the Lee Brothers Studio archive. The Lee Brothers Studio was a prominent studio in early twentieth century Singapore which employed Victorian photographic practices to produce portraits of upper-class residents. Through a postcolonial lens, this dissertation explores the dress practices of the migrants and how they reflected key discursive formations operating within the colonial paradigm. It draws from Homi Bhabha’s framework of postcolonial enunciation and from scholars of fashion studies discussing dress as a situated bodily practice. I employ the visual analysis methodology provided by Gillian Rose alongside discourse and archival research methods to bring forth discussions around identity-formation in migrants and shed light on discourses around photographic practices in the early twentieth century. By doing so, my research contributes to postcolonial scholarship and identity formation within fashion studies in South and Southeast Asia.