Abstract

This work is a comparative analysis of the visual culture of Indian restaurants in two neighbourhoods on the island of Montreal, Quebec. This project conceives of visual culture as that which constitutes the dialectical and dynamic exchange of visual knowledges in social, cultural and urban contexts, and in doing so, frames the research process as being engaged with the production and reproduction of such knowledges. Through photographing and analyzing the street front aesthetics of these restaurants, the work explores the role of the visual in projecting ethnicized identities that engage the imaginations and expectations of culturally and historically positioned gazes within the context of consumption, culinary tourism, and place branding. This work is a unique contribution to the literatures of Indian restaurants as the first to be conducted in Montreal, as well as being a contribution to the growing field of visual culture as both a subject and methodology, reflexively problematizing the positioned gaze of the photograph and the authoritative categorizations of academic authorship.