Empire Line (2005) series by British photographer Gavin Fernandes.
Fernandes describes the series in British Asian Style: Fashion & Textiles / Past and Present:
By subverting representations of British “memsahibs” and their indigenous Indian servants, and through the interaction of period British costume and native Indian dress, Empire Line explores the politics of clothing and its relationship with class and caste in 19th-century colonial India.
Though so rooted in colonial imagery, I love how Fernandes’s work also speaks to the complex and often problematic cultural exchanges of the contemporary fashion industry.
Ruth St-Denis and Ted Shawn (Founder of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival)
The photograph was taken by Franklin Price Knott in 1916. He is one of the first to have a colour image appear in National Geographic Magazine. Ruth St-Denis and her partner and husband Ted Shawn, modern dance pioneers, were best known for the “oriental” productions.
FUCK CULTURAL APPROPRIATION.
