Encounters between Indians and foreigners from the late 18^th century through to the present have produced a body of potent graphic images that reflect national and personal relations through periods of colonization, rapid urbanisation and social change. New technologies such as lithography, photography and oleography facilitated the mass production and circulation of images shaped by the social, cultural, and political dynamics at play.

With the resultant visual legacy in mind, contemporary Indian artist Pushpamala N. collaborated in 2004 with British photographer Claire Arni to produce a series of photographs commenting with perceptive wit on her inheritance and identity.  The title of the series – ‘Native women of South India: Manners and Customs’ – deliberately references the 19^th century European anthropological approach to Indians as colonial subjects. Specifically Pushpamala focuses on the anthropometric photographs of the Andaman Island natives taken by Maurice Vidal Portman in the late 19^th century. Other images in the series re-cast the mass-produced portraits created by the famous exponent of stylistic Europeanization, Rami Varma (1848-1906) with the artist as subject. Read as a collection, the photographs constitute a fragmented narrative of the religious and colonial heritage which exists alongside the social and political realities of contemporary India.