Akshay Mahajan

Thank you

Opening Roots of the Earth at Jhaveri Contemporary — showing new work from People of Clay, drawn from the folk songs and clay traditions of Goalpara, where memory clings to the earth.
Honoured to share the space with the powerful work of Prabhakar Kamble.

Almost step by step

Hiraeth—I’ve always thought it belonged to South Asia. Its sound slips so easily into Urdu, into Hindi, wears the weight of Persian longing. Only later did I learn it was Welsh. Strange how absence speaks in many tongues, how longing is a language without borders.

Also the police have been reduced to militia

Decisive cat moment from the archives. This one from Cairo.

At this point, it doesn’t seem like an inability as much as a deliberate shift… A librarian friend in the US mentioned a significant uptick in funding for libraries to collect materials like family archives. Makes you wonder—are we seeing the creation of a new commons to train the next dataset?

It’s ironic to think that well-intentioned movements like Copyleft and Creative Commons have inadvertently enabled the creation of the massive datasets used to train generative AI. Makes you wonder—was that by design, or just an unforeseen consequence?

#ai #photography

From the series “Stranger, Friend and Faithful Partner”

The loom unravels, thread by thread, as dusk swallows the waiting shore.
Beyond the shrine, the sea hums a promise—of return, of forgetting, of Ithaca never quite reached.
Penelope watches, neither weaving nor unwoven, her fingers tracing ghosts in the wind.

The Past, Present, and Future of AI | Aperture Conversations February 18, 2025 | Join for a conversation between artist Trevor Paglen and art historian Noam M. Elcott.

How #AI is quickly transforming the field of #photography and our broader culture of images., a conversation with @paglen.studio. A free online event from Aperture.

Intriguing patterns—possibly the work of termites. Nature’s own abstract art

Open Call: Excited to curate a show at Platform Project in Athens 2025 for “Postcards from Home” with Photini and Ana. If your work explores home, memory, and belonging, apply here: forms.gle/24ziGdhRtdJo...

Elephants belong to water and earth. They drench themselves, then shroud their bodies in dust, becoming the land itself. The mahout murmured, ‘Hathi aru mathi’—‘the elephant is earth.’ Elephants Narayan & Noga at Pobitora, Assam, with head mahout Mr. Deka.

Max Pinckers - Open Books The exhibition Open Books at the NCPA’s Dilip Piramal Gallery in Mumbai situates Belgian photographer Max Pinckers’ evolving body of work in a city that shaped one of his earliest endeavors.

Max Pinckers’ Open Books at the NCPA in Bombay examines the photobook as a site of experimentation and resistance. I explore his publishing career and six key works in my latest piece for C4 Journal. Read it here: c4journal.com/max-pinckers...

Just landed in Delhi after more than half a decade—the city carries the scent of burnt embers, perhaps the remnants of whatever decency we once had as a country, as a people.

Walking past the Dentrakia, I recall our breakfast table, now just a memory. At night, tsipouro lingers under swaying trees, lending coherence to the chaos as we savour olives, goat’s cheese, and sausage. The past clings, resisting the tides of modernity. #Greece

Since I quit smoking, I find it harder to approach strangers. Smoking made me ubiquitous, like walking a dog. Without it, I feel distant, observing rather than participating. A cigarette was once a quiet bridge—now, conversations feel harder to light.

Ithaca’s famed wooden boats, once crafted for the multiport trade, are now fiberglass ghosts. The mythic allure remains, whispering through the salt air, lingering in the tides. What is lost, what remains, and what still drifts into memory?

The last boatmaker of on the mythical island of Ithaca, recalling his time in Bombay at the Seaman’s Club in Ballard Estate—trying to remember the island with the caves reached by wooden boats with white sails. “Elephanta,” I prompt. Ithaca clings to its Homeric past. #Odyssey #Ithaca

I love how @adobelive.bsky.social steals from you to train their ai models and charges you a subscription from it

I’ll be in conversation with Max Pinckers on Open Books in Bombay this week—where photobooks challenge the boundaries of truth, fiction, and storytelling.

📅 Jan 9, 3:30 PM
📍 Dilip Piramal Art Gallery, NCPA
Free entry! Register now: in.bookmyshow.com/events/open-...

Curating Archive of Potential (Goan) Futures for the Serendipity Arts Festival has been such a rewarding journey. We’ve reimagined archives—not as dusty records of the past, but as living stories that shape Goa’s future. Can’t wait for you to experience it at the Art Park, Panjim! #SerendipityArts

Excited to share my recent interview on See Zeen, where I talk about my artistic practice, the intersections of memory, colonial histories, and photographic narratives.

Read the full conversation here: see-zeen.com/akshay-mahajan

#Photography #Art #Memory #PostColonialNarratives #SeeZeen

Hope they find the places of worship act 1991

There’s an ancient temple inside the excavator.

The state of the nation and our new national emblem

In Bangalore there is the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), whose website also hosts Map academy which is a good resource.The city hosts Kanike that hosts a darkroom among other things

There’s actually quite a lot happening! Both Hyderabad and Chennai host vibrant photo festivals, offering a wealth of exhibitions, talks, and symposiums. In addition, there are at least two fantastic photobook libraries to explore — Editions Jojo in Mumbai and Offset in Delhi

I’m sure some of these numbers are because of “genuine pollutants” but I think for the large part of the landmass it’s just probably just dust and natural particulate matter. For example what are the major pollutants in northern Sri Lanka.