ABOUT US
NEWS
NEWS
Background
Founded in 2022 by award winning, filmmaker, photographer and author Alakananda Nag, 'ARCHIVAL MATTER 'came into being with the singular purpose to discover history beyond history books.
Philosophy
Our interest lies at the intersection of what we know and what we can learn from the under-documented.
Methodology
We are not historians but we work with experts to get a deeper understanding of the subject at hand. We work with an international network of researchers, designers, writers, photographers and artists to create a body of work.
Outcome
We then turn that into memorable books, multi-media installations, podcasts, social media content, online archive, and a whole lot more.
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And history is no longer relegated to history books and dusty archives, but fun, contemporary and cool.
Founder & Artistic Director, Archival Matter
Alakananda Nag
Alakananda Nag is a photographer, writer, archive nerd, and former Cannes Lions Gold winning filmmaker. She graduated in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism from International Center of Photography in New York.
In 2021 her first book Armenians of Calcutta was launched virtually in New York at Printed Matter’s Art Book Fair. In 2022, it had a series of on-site launches at the Goethe Institute Kolkata, Asiatic Society Mumbai, Edible Archives Goa and at the International Center of Photography in New York.
Armenians of Calcutta has been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art & Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon.
She founded Archival Matter with the intention to explore the intersection of the documented and that which has been left out from the corridors of history.
She has been a participating artist in the Fulbright funded prestigious internationally exhibited Following the Box, based on a set of 128 found photographs from 1945 taken by an American soldier during WWII around Calcutta.
She is an Arts Practice grantee of the India Foundation for the Arts.
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