Memories of Sarawak: an investigation of archival photography and social memory in the upriver communities of Malaysian Borneo

This project proposes the use of archival photographs of remote upriver communities in Southeast Asia for investigating notions of social memory and identity. The Sarawak Museum in Malaysia has a vast archive of photographs of Indigenous communities in the State. In this project, the images are digitised, analysed in their historical role and used within the communities they were taken in to trace the changes that have occurred in the span of their existence. Some points of focus are digitising archives, changing attitudes in the field of visual anthropology, using new media for opening up archives for re-appropriation of artefacts