Lecture on early ethnographic (frontier) photography on colonial India was held at Orchid (Boutique hotel) Kohima with Akshaya Tankha as the resource person on Monday.

The programme was organized by Kikrulhounyu Pappino, coordinator and curator.
The captioned photographs and presentation were presented through a projector as illustrations focused on the history of ethnographic photography in colonial India based on archival research at the Alkazi Foundation for Arts in New Delhi.

Akshaya discussed on prominent examples of photographic albums and publications that became precedents in the field of photography in the late 19th and early 20th century India, based on survey that included northeastern states such as Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and among others.

His lecture and presentation concluded with observation on some of the enduring legacies of the significant colonial archive and also interacted with the participants.

It may be mentioned that Akshaya Tankhais was a Ph. D student at the department of arts, university of Toronto. He received a master degree in arts and aesthetics from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and M. Phil anthropology from University of Cambridge U.K.

He worked at Alkazi Foundation for Arts, a photography archive in India from 2008-11 before commencing Ph. D in fall 2011 and was intensively involved in fieldwork over a period of two months surveying museums both government run as well as private in the northeastern states of India, namely Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya and Assam in the summer of 2006.

His research focuses on visual representation of ethnic identity in contemporary Nagaland in museum, publicly celebrated festivals and other sites in the public sphere. College principals, lecturers and other public attended the programme.