Dr Diva Gujral
I am a historian and art historian specialised in twentieth-century Indian photography and visual culture. I am a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, and an Extraordinary Junior Research Fellow in the History of Art at the Queen's College, Oxford.
Research
Working between History, History of Art and South Asian Studies, my research explores Indian art and photography in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in conversation with the country’s political landscape. My doctoral thesis, ‘Picturing Non-Alignment: Photography, nation-building and identity in India, c. 1950-1975 (UCL 2021) framed non-alignment, independent India’s foreign policy of anti-colonialism and Afro-Asian alliance-building, as a method for understanding the many worlds of Indian film and photography in the 1950s and 1960s. I am in the process of developing the central ideas of my thesis into a monograph on Indian photography and film through the lens of non-alignment.
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My academic writing has been published in Object, Oxford Art Journal, and two recent volumes on Indian photography. I have contributed exhibition catalogue essays to The Imaginary Institution of India (Barbican, London, 2024); Ouvrir l’album du monde: Photographies (1842-1911) (Musée du Quai-Branly, Paris, 2023); Time and Time Again: Jyoti Bhatt (Museum of Art and Photography, Bengaluru, 2022) and Light and Magic: The Birth of Art Photography (London, Tate Modern, forthcoming 2026).
My research interests include global art histories; the cultural Cold War; photographic modernism; colonial visual culture; anti-colonial solidarity networks; and themes of postcolonial utopias and colonial legacies in South Asian visual culture.
Public Writing
In 2019 I co-authored the book Photography in India: A Visual History from the 1850s to the Present (Prestel Verlag), a pioneering volume of Indian photography from its colonial iterations to the present day. The book has been favourably received in popular press publications such as CNN and The Indian Express. I have written features on art and photography in Aperture, Scroll.in and Source; and have produced exhibition reviews for publications including Frieze and Critical Collective.
Curatorial/
Collaborating
I am passionate about reconciling my research with artistic and curatorial initiatives. In 2017, I curated “Photography at Play: Bhatt, Karia and Mohamedi in Baroda” for Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai, translating my PhD research on the Baroda-based photographers Nasreen Mohamedi, Jyoti Bhatt and Bhupendra Karia into an exhibition of mid-century photography. I am a consultant for artists, photographers and museum spaces working on South Asia and its global coordinates.
I welcome collaborations with fellow researchers as well as artists, curators and other members of the cultural sector. Do get in touch!
Address
Dr Diva Gujral
The Queen's College
High Street, Oxford
OX1 4AW