Talks / Ideas / Philosophy

Explorations in South and Southeast Asian photography: A roundtable discussion on three ongoing research projects

Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square

Tue 6 Oct · 17:30

Talk

About this event

This roundtable discussion brings together three researchers who will share their insights into South and Southeast Asian photography through their current projects. Shalini Amerasinghe Ganendra DSG Shalini Amerasinghe Ganendra’s research is informed by her concept of “veins of influence”, tracing not simply an image or object, but the people, institutions, collections and journeys through which it acquires meaning. This approach underpins her 2023 monograph, Veins of Influence: Colonial Sri Lanka , (available at Hatchard’s and Daunt Books), which draws on more than 450 photographs from international collections. Her current interests extend to the dispersed photographic and material histories of Borneo and the ways colonial images can be re-examined through contemporary scholarship. Conan Cheong Conan Cheong’s doctoral project is a history of relations between people in Luang Prabang, Lao PDR, as mediated by photography and the camera. He draws from the over 35,000 photographs accumulated by monks now held in the Buddhist Archives of Luang Prabang, as well as on interviews and ethnographic observations of the communities centred on the archive conducted in 2024–25. He investigates how this close-knit Theravāda Buddhist Sangha (monastic community) incorporated photography into its quotidian existence over the course of the twentieth century, with nodes of convergence including monastic comportment, ritual practices like merit-making and transference, and doctrinal points like non-self ( anatta ) and impermanence ( anicca ). Pha Khamchan Virachitta Maha Thela at the merit-dedication ceremony for his deceased teacher, Pha Kaenchan Kaccayana Maha Thela in Vat Saen Sukharam. Unknown Lao photographer, 1940s. Collection of Vat Saen Sukharam, Buddhist Archives of Luang Prabang, B-2491. Joshua Hoskin Joshua Hoskin’s project grew out of a CO-OP internship where he investigated a box containing unidentified photographic portraits at the British Museum. Through his research he has now reliably attributed these 879 silver bromide prints of Cambodian dancers to Sir Gerald F. Kelly. They are currently part of the British Museum’s non-registered collection. This began a process of digital repatriation to Cambodia, with the hope that the archive will eventually constitute a vital resource for practitioners and scholars of Cambodian dance. In December of 2025, a workshop in Phnom Penh opened a dialogue on the future of the archive as a site of remembrance, resilience and reconstruction in the wake of twentieth century ruptures in practice and in memory. Connections were also made with family and former students of one of the pictured dancers, for whom the images represent relics of an ancestor and a teacher. A box containing 137 photographic portraits of renowned Cambodian dancer “Néac Sami” (Chea Samy). The silver bromide prints were taken from images captured by Sir Gerald Festus Kelly in April 1937, and are now part of the non-registered collection of the British Museum. Photograph: Joshua Hoskin. Registration This event is free to attend, but registration is required. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Organisers This event is jointly organised by the Centre of Southeast Asian Studies and the School of Arts South and Southeast Asia Research Seminar. Header image: Wedding of Amelia and Louis Pieris, Rajiyiriya Mansion, circe 1920