A website that attempts to archive our history

Bangalore: Meet a woman who started an online portal that attempts to archive our history using photographs.

From Delhi University's first girl rock band 'Mad Hatter' to the bell-bottoms and Rajdoot bikes of the 70's and the stories of a Miss India winner who eventually beat Bollywood star Zeenat Aman, Indian Memory Project is an online portal that attempts to archive our history using photographs that can speak a thousand words. The project is the brainchild of documentary photographer Anusha Yadav and has had nearly 3 lakh visits since the website went online in 2010.

"It's like solving a mystery. You are solving a mystery through pictures found in various family albums and you're tracing a history of a country that I think we are all unaware of. I mean people don't know, apart from their own little bubble what the rest of the country is like. So, this is my attempt to find out," says Anusha Yadav.

Meet a woman who started an online portal that attempts to archive our history using photographs.

Anusha started the project just to satisfy her curiosity. In the early stages, the project drew photos from Anusha's network of friends but very soon she found her self flooded with old and rare photos from strangers, like the one of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru at a mountaineering institute in 1961.

"A lot of people have started sending pictures. Earlier the concept was not clear. They started sending pictures they had found, which were poster pictures, pictures from advertisements or pictures that they would see in text books. But, the response has been exquisite. So, people keep going back and sharing and forwarding and stories that belong to all of us," says Yadav.

Anusha believes that sites like these make India's history more accessible and interesting to the net-savvy generation.

With each photograph telling a story, Anusha hopes that the Indian memory project will become a source for everyone to trace their own histories and connect with strangers and friends through glimpses from the past.

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