ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the roles assumed by three generations of Indian women in determining narratives for photographic albums from their vacations. The four albums studied here range from the 1950s to the 1990s, encapsulating the touristic engagements of the album-makers/keepers, from their childhood to adult years. The albums belong to different time frames in the family's history, and represent alternative ideological phases in India's political economy. Within their families, as keepers of the photographic archive of the Prashad family, the women actively express a resolved sense of their place in that family narrative. This chapter regards the Prashads as examples of how single Indian women of the middle-class vacationed in a foreign country, while visiting family and gaining exposure to the new cultures in a globalized world. The findings of this essay challenge the more widely known scholarly expositions on photographs of vacations in which the protagonists are Western males of an elite background. Based on personal interviews and photo elucidations, these women's photographic documentation evidencing familial wholeness through tourist photography is examined for how they confirm individual female identities ensconced in domestic belonging.
