Working primarily with the photograph, Anup Mathew Thomas’s works engage ostensibly local narratives, introducing audiences to stories that may have gone missing from the archive. Over the last two decades, he has produced a series of projects that engage with and make reference to the cultural history of his native Kerala. Predominantly working in series, his images offer access to microhistories and subcultures embedded in the seemingly every day. They also bring to light phenomena and social realities in Kerala and India that is hard to grasp, such as the perpetuation of cultural myths that reinforce social hierarchies, or which generate behaviors mixing religious and political practices. He employs both anecdotal and factual narrative styles, and the work often culminates in carefully staged portraiture. In exploring the slippages between documentary and artistic practice, Thomas’s work is consistently in dialogue with the complexities of representation through the photographic image.