“While being a researcher and archivist usually means that there is no shortage of exciting and novel things to discover,” says Sanam Sindhi, “if you’re as obsessive about your niche interests as I am, there are moments when you can find yourself seemingly at the edge of all there is to know.” New York, for her, is the cure to this feeling, “with its excess of bookstores, libraries, and a recent renaissance of independent, new spaces for print lovers.”
As the founder of
@southasiaarchive – a research initiative, consultancy, and preservation platform that uncovers alternative visual histories, sartorial politics, and counter-narratives of the subcontinent and its diaspora – Sindhi’s work is defined by a devotion to the overlooked and the ephemeral. This guide extends that impulse into the city she calls her “favorite place to research” – an intellectual capital where “nothing is sexier than being smart,” and where the New York Public Library stands as a temple to print, surrounded by an abundance of smaller spots that keep its spirit alive. It’s these smaller spaces that Sindhi’s guide focuses on.
Read the complete guide on somethingcurated.com now.
Editor:
@ke5hava
📷: 1-3. Sanam at Climax Books and Library180. Photography by
@thomas_mccarty for Something Curated
4. Courtesy Casa Magazines
5. Courtesy High Valley Books. Photography by Morgan Dojny
6. Courtesy Vowels Research Library. Photography by Max Balderas
7. Courtesy Asia Art Archive in America. Photography by Argenis Apolinario
