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Sri Lanka’s recent history and present, characterised by majoritarian governance, ethno-nationalist conflict, and civil war, is entangled with the multidimensional marginalisation of the island’s Tamil-speaking communities, reinforcing an ethnicised hierarchy of citizenship. Within such a fraught setting, exacerbated by surveillance, securitisation and militarisation, what can the photography studio reveal about the relationship between the Sri Lankan state and its Tamil citizens? What role does studio photography play in the production of citizenship/s? Drawing on long-term ethnographic research focused on Sri Lanka’s Tamil-owned photography studios, I ask what the studio makes possible in terms of citizenship. I will consider the enduring significance of the photography studio as a dynamic space integral to post/colonial and post/war citizen-making, and in giving photographic shape to individual and collective aspirations and fantasies.

Vindhya Buthpitiya is an anthropologist working at the intersection of conflict and visual culture. Her research is focused on ethno-nationalism and political violence in Sri Lanka, examining the local and global aftermaths of civil war through the making and moving of images. She is a lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews.

Event image credit: Studio desk display, Jaffna, December 2024. Photo courtesy of Vindhya Buthpitiya