Amsterdam | 'Crossings' Photography from the Indian Subcontinent

From 4 July until 12 October 2025, Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is holding an exhibition that presents a dialogue between 19th-century British colonial photography and contemporary work by artist Vasantha Yogananthan. 

The Rijksmuseum photography collection holds some 1,200 images from 19th-century India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet. Many of these images were commissioned for European and American audiences who knew very little about the countries and regions they depict. The photographs supposedly presented an objective view of the world, but now we can see how they clearly reflected the interests of the people who commissioned them.

The exhibition Crossings presents the selection of colonial images alongside photographs by Yogananthan, who, more than a century later, visited the same areas to explore his own background.

Find out more about the exhibition here.