In a free-wheeling talk set against the backdrop of striking images from this archive, Pooja shared her impetus for maintaining India Street Lettering for a decade and investing in outreach for this research. She shared the methods and perspectives that she employs to make meaning from her ever-growing collection of photographs, focusing on the collections she has built through annotations — signs on Chennai’s hardware stores, Udaipur’s food carts, Mumbai’s Art Deco apartment complexes and Haridwar’s ashrams, among others. Her focus was also on the many enquiries and dialogues that this project helps initiate, and she debuted her first set of zines at this public lecture.

Watch the talk on Youtube.