Annu Palakunnathu Matthew

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew (born 1964 in Stourport, England) is a professor of art (photography) in the University of Rhode Island's Department of Art and Art History. She is also currently the director of the URI Center for the Humanities. Matthew’s photo-based work draws from her experience of having lived between cultures and about being an immigrant in the USA. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, on CNN Photo Blog, and in Buzzfeed. It is also included in the book Blink which compiles the work of 100 contemporary photographers. Her work has been exhibited at her gallerist, SepiaEye, in New York The RISD Museum; Guangzhou Biennial of Photography, China; Tang Museum, New York; and The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

By 2050, the U.S. populations once called "minorities" will become the majority. To Majority Minority examines these changes, and the new, multicultural America, in terms of cultures, religions and stories. The portfolio explores the generational transition from immigrant to native within families, starting with portrait photographs from immigrant’s albums. Old photographs reflect where immigrants have come from, revealing family histories and shared stories of immigration.

An Indian From India plays on the confusion between Native Americans and Indians from India. It uses photographs of Native Americans from the Nineteenth Century and early Twentieth Century that perpetuated and reinforced stereotypes and finds similarities in how Nineteenth and early Twentieth century photographers of Native Americans looked at what they called the primitive natives, similar to the colonial gaze of the Nineteenth century British photographers working in India.

Open Wound uses photo animations to explore the turmoil of families impacted by the Partition of India in 1947. It has been 65 years since the Partition, where 12 million people were displaced within three months and over a million died. But unlike tragedies such as the Holocaust, there is no memorial about the Partition. There is little for the larger public to understand and commemorate those impacted by this tragedy.

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