Decoding the <i>[blanks]</i> : An Investigation toward Speculative Redress

Abstract This article concerns an undeclared photo album residing in Harvard's Peabody Museum titled Photograph album of postcards and bw photos from India c. 1926. A collection of photographs of identifiable landmarks from Madras, Jaipur, and Hyderabad as well as of less familiar subjects, travel guidebooks produced by imperial agencies, and “Native type” postcards of intentionally empty backgrounds existing outside of space or time, the album is of unclear provenance. The present article starts as a formal analysis of the materials, motivations, and forms of album collection and image-making in colonial India and becomes a critical reworking of authorized histories and the indexicality of photography. In the end, the author documents these findings in two parts: the first a speculative drawing that configures systems of colonial power, trade, travel, labor, and ecology, and the second a layering of the album's photos with woodcut prints, which thus opens them to new social encounters and transforms their meanings in potentially infinite ways.