The British Academy has commissioned new photography from award-winning photographer Arko Datto to bring to life the themes of Professor Nandini Das's book, Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire, which was awarded last year's British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.
Arko Datto, who is based in India, will be creatively reinterpreting Professor Das's book through his photography. The resulting photographs will be exhibited at the British Academy on 15 September, as part of London's Open House weekend. The project is supported by the Hawthornden Foundation.
Professor Das said: "I am grateful to Hawthornden Foundation and the British Academy for suggesting this wonderfully generative and imaginative project. It has been exhilarating for me to see aspects of the book refracted through Arko’s lens as he moved through some of the same spaces that I had approached primarily through 400-year-old records. At the same time, it has reminded me repeatedly – with precision, empathy, and humour – how closely the past and the present is interwoven into the very fabric of everyday life in present-day India.”
Find out more on the British Academy website
