History of Art PhD Candidate, Ayesha Matthan, presented a talk on September 6, 2023, titled "The 'Bombay' that never was: Photography and Censorship in the City" as part of the Virtual Seminar Series "Contesting the City: Migration, Spaces & Practices" organized by KREA University's Moturi Satyanarayana Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences & Dept of Politics in India. Ayesha discussed a now little-known publication of Bombay that was banned in the late 1970s in the city and how the city is configured and contested through photography and writing. She examined how the book's photographic and literary representation of public spaces during religious festivities, community, labor and the growing assertion of the Shiv Sena conversed with modernity, censorship and media publics.
