Doc: Doc — Sumathi Ramaswamy and Avrati Bhatnagar on Collaboration and Curating the Photography of Civil Disobedience

On opening night of Disobedient Subjects: Bombay 1930–31 at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) visitors leaned in close, tracing faces in black-and-white photographs captured nearly a century ago. Presented by CDS in partnership with The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, the exhibition has welcomed hundreds into the streets of Bombay — today’s Mumbai — and India’s Civil Disobedience Movement, where ordinary citizens transformed the city into a center of anticolonial resistance.

As the exhibition nears its close, curators Avrati Bhatnagar and Sumathi Ramaswamy reflect on the scholarly partnership that shaped the project and the support that made the U.S. debut of these rare images possible.

This conversation is part of Doc: Doc, an interview series from CDS where we talk shop with documentarians and explore the evolving field of nonfiction storytelling. This is our first feature with curators and two Duke historians offering a rare look behind the scenes.

Q: Since we’re discussing a photography exhibition, I’d like to begin with a graduation photo I spotted of the two of you. Can you tell me about it? 

Avrati Bhatnagar: This was taken on May 12, 2025, the day of my Ph.D. graduation. You see Sumathi hooding me inside Duke Chapel. It’s a lovely moment — the culmination of my graduate career.

Sumathi Ramaswamy: It was my first time ever participating in a hooding ceremony in person. I was worried I would goof up so I practiced for two days. And I knew how important it was, especially because Avrati’s parents had flown all the way from India. That photograph really captures a special moment also for me, the advisor, launching my wonderful mentee on the next steps on her life journey. And she showed me beforehand how to line up the hood just right, as I am always learning from her. 

Q: What first drew you to working together?

Bhatnagar: I came to Duke in 2017 already familiar with Sumathi’s work. As an M.Phil. student in India studying visual culture, I read her book Empires of Vision and became interested in linking historical study and visual studies. When I decided to pursue a Ph.D., she was the person I most wanted to work with.

My very first class on campus was her course, Camera Asia, taught with Gennifer Weisenfeld. That class became formative; it helped me realize I wanted to work on the history of photography in India. The thread from that class to this exhibition is so strong. 

Ramaswamy: Even though it was her first class as an international student in an American classroom, she was a standout. She became a standout mentor to an undergraduate we paired her with. And the paper she wrote for the class — Archiving the Archive: Dayanita Singh’s File Room — she published it. Gennifer and I assigned that article when we taught the course again this fall, and when the class visited the exhibit I was able to introduce her as the co-curator and my collaborator and Dr. Avrati Bhatnagar — an alum of the class.

Q: How did your mentor-mentee relationship evolve into collaboration?

Ramaswamy: Formally, I was her advisor, and I take advising extremely seriously. My job is to make sure the student lives up to their best potential, and I push for that. But her project came closer and closer to topics close to my heart. So I grew, which is the most fulfilling thing. I hadn’t worked on Bombay at all, and through her research I learned so much about the city. So, it’s a two‑way street.

Bhatnagar: Sumathi does push a lot — but in such a wonderful way. In graduate school, you want to become a scholar, so it’s really amazing to have an advisor who cares and who’s invested. I submitted multiple drafts of writing, and she always responded with ways to make things better. 

When we wrote our History of Photography article in 2021 (Light Writing on the Lathi Raj, Bombay, 1930–31), which led to both this exhibit and our scholarly volume, I saw her early drafts, how she conceptualizes research, how she works with journal editors. It was hands‑on training on professionalization that shaped my dissertation on the politicization of consumerism, based on the same album as the exhibition.

Ramaswamy: We became true collaborators. She gave me feedback on my writing too — fixing words, suggesting clearer phrasing. 

Q: Collaboration seems central to this exhibition. Can you tell me about your partners in India. 

Bhatnagar: Our primary first collaborators were at the Alkazi Collection of Photography, a major archive based in Delhi. This collaboration was so important for us as scholars, also because we started to work on an archival object that had not seen the light of day in decades. And from the beginning, we knew this is a Bombay album — about the people of Bombay, the city of Bombay. So first it had to show there first. The exhibit first opened at the CSMVS Museum in Mumbai, a major public museum in October, just before the opening of the exhibit at CDS, and it was buzzing. 

Q: How did your cross-campus partnership with CDS shape the exhibition’s U.S. debut?

Ramaswamy: We could not have done this without CDS. Chris Sims, the director, was amazing. We talked fairly early on with Chris because he is a photographer too, and Avrati had been a grad assistant to him. His organizational skills are at another level altogether — the roadmaps, the workflows, the color coding. I had never before curated an exhibit with photographs. He walked us through framing, printing, shipping, installation, even de‑installation.

Bhatnagar: We learned that curation is not just selecting images and writing text. It’s knowing the sizes of prints, materials, paper, hardware, installation plans. CDS helped us with every step. 

Q: What has it meant to see people engage with the photographs in the exhibition?

Bhatnagar: It’s been so amazing to see people walk into the galleries and spend time with the photographs. In Mumbai, visitors filled an entire guest book. The press coverage, including on BBC News, has filled us with delight. At CDS, opening night was jam packed, and we’ve had visitors come from Charlotte, DC, New York. 

The exhibition also became a dynamic teaching space. We hosted eight sessions for Duke instructors and students across photography studies, histories of empire and urban studies. Middle schoolers from the Duke School visited too. Their curiosity and incisive questions about visual evidence, historical context, and the relationship between everyday life and mass movements were heartening. Seeing people experience the work — the physicality of it — is very powerful.

Ramaswamy: Just the other day, I saw six people studying the photographs closely — reading every caption. We’ve seen gallery directors, scholars and community members visit the exhibit. The word got out. I think the show resonates deeply right now because of everything we’re all living through. 

Q: The exhibition concludes with a closing reception on Friday and a workshop on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. What can participants expect?

Bhatnagar: We want to broaden the conversation to reflect on how these photographs of Bombay connect to other movements and how visual practices — especially photography — shape, record and reimagine histories of anticolonial and antiauthoritarian resistance. We’re bringing together scholars, curators and artists studying U.S. civil rights photography, and protests in Iran, Indonesia, Afghanistan. 

Ramaswamy: There’s extensive scholarship on civil disobedience, going back to Thoreau, but far less on the image cultures that accompany it. We hope this project has nice legs now, becomes a larger initiative. And we’re hoping the India and U.S. exhibitions will travel and reach more people.