Vindhya Buthpitiya, "A Volatile Picture: War and the Political Work of Photography in Sri Lanka" (U Washington Press, 2026)

Apr 29, 2026

Vindhya Buthpitiya, an anthropologist who studies ethnonationalist conflict and visual/media cultures in Sri Lanka, discusses how photography shaped political life during and after the civil war. She explores studio and everyday images, ID photos turned into memorials and protest tools, the role of photographers as community memory-keepers, and photography’s shifting power across competing nationalisms.

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INSIGHT

Everyday Photos as Political Evidence

Everyday photography became a political tool during and after Sri Lanka's war, used to contest state narratives and sustain community memory.
Vindhya Buthpitiya traced how family albums, ID photos, and studio portraits moved from private keepsakes to public evidence in protests and archives.

ANECDOTE

Fieldwork Found Jaffna's Hidden Photo Lineage

Vindhya conducted 14–15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in northern Sri Lanka starting in 2017 and expanded research into the UK because the diaspora preserved dispersed materials.
She used oral histories from elder studio photographers who recalled Jaffna's photographic lineage and preserved local memory absent from formal archives.

ADVICE

Use Diaspora Archives To Fill Gaps

To study marginalized visual histories, combine ethnography with diasporic archives and oral testimony to fill official archival gaps.
Vindhya used transnational fieldwork because displaced communities and elder photographers preserved records missing from state archives.

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A Volatile Picture: War and the Political Work of Photography in Sri Lanka (U Washington Press, 2026) by Dr. Vindhya Buthpitiya is a groundbreaking ethnography that explores how, in the context of Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war and its turbulent aftermath, photography has become bound to the Tamil political imagination. From state-commissioned images meant to surveil and rebel documentation of armed resistance, to the fragile memorials created from identity photographs of the disappeared, A Volatile Picture traces the making and moving of images across borders, communities, and generations. Studio portraits, passport pictures, family albums, atrocity photography, social media posts, and more act not only as records of loss and horror but also as vital tools for protest, solidarity, and the realization of alternate political futures. Drawing on transnational archival and ethnographic encounters and long-term fieldwork in northern Sri Lanka, Dr. Buthpitiya situates photography as both a volatile medium and a political practice. Photographs emerge here as incendiary agents—simultaneously evidencing and triggering violence, sustaining memory, and inciting new visions of liberation.
This is the first in-depth study of Tamil photographic practices in Sri Lanka, offering a major contribution to the anthropology of war, visual culture, and South Asian studies. Richly researched and deeply humane, A Volatile Picture demonstrates how, amid devastation and displacement, photographs continue to generate truths, solidarities, and hopes that resist erasure.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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