Imagining home: Mahtab Hussain’s photography of diaspora and belonging

Abstract

This paper responds to the works of photographers dealing with questions of diaspora, home, and belonging in the context of South Asia. I offer a close reading of the works and practices of Mahtab Hussain, a British-Kashmiri artist, by placing his photographs and practices in conversation with the work of scholars in the field of diaspora studies and educational research. Hussain’s photographic work offers a curriculum: a rewriting, a creation, an imagination, and a retelling of the story of the Azad Kashmiri diaspora and it is told from multiple axes—the homeland, those who moved, and the ways in which this migration impacted the lives of those who stayed back. Ultimately, Hussain’s artistic work invites educational researchers, theorists, and artists to rethink our notions of home, belonging, and diaspora; to imagine otherwise.

Keywords:

• Photography
• diaspora
• visual methodologies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 I want to be careful about how I articulate this perceived omission. It is important to acknowledge that in the past few decades there has been a growing interest in the relationship between diaspora and photography. A significant portion of the work has dealt with familial photographs (for e.g., Campt, 2012). Several other scholars have engaged with the subject of photography and diaspora through the lens of artistic practice (for e.g., Mani, 2010). The work of these scholars informs my own scholarship. However, in this paper I am engaging the overlapping omission of photography in the context of diaspora studies and educational research.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vivek Vellanki

Vivek Vellanki likes to look at photographs, make photographs, and think about how photographs shape our understanding of the world and each other. He enjoys playing, pondering the existential questions that children ask us, and travelling (usually by road) with friends.