“Angrez chale gaye lekin aap ko chhod gaye.” This is a Hindi phrase that means “The English left but left you behind.” This remark has entered the common vocabulary of interactions between people who see themselves as real Indians and those they see as inauthentic Indians. My current body of work is a response to this phrase, which rings in my ear every time I visit India. The complexity within this inquiry begins when I calculate the fact that I am an American who never lived during the time of the British Raj in India and neither am I English. As the subject, I perform the English woman in my photographs, I collect the evidence of my hypothetical existence in order to know why I am perceived as “what the English left behind.”
