The project was born out of admiration and fascination for the poetry and prose of contemporary Dalit poets like NamdeoDhasal and Daya Pawar. Loud cries to topple age-old systems of caste oppression and exclusion run through their texts. History and Photography are like each other in that they rely on a system of exclusions, which implicitly structures what is represented or said. The absence that the photographic medium creates in relation to the meaning it produces is immense. Hence critiquing an institution which uses photography to aid the production and reception of history meaning or truth (pictorial), becomes relevant to this project. Archaeology plays an important part in history making; it has also given so much power to the photographic. The role played by photography in archaeology is pivotal since the discovery of the medium. The archaeological photograph, as ‘evidence’, plays a role in carrying forward and transmitting this residual or broken knowledge, and the lingering remains of systems of thought from centuries. In a country like India the historical ruin (SITE-1)*can be read as a drastic representation of the caste system since they embody in stone the very prejudices propagated by the ancient texts. What remains after the death of any organism, or after something collapses or erodes, is its detritus. It is that which allows for the growth and proliferation of new things, which are not necessarily the same as the original. My project relies on erasure to create (new) meanings. The institutional archaeological photographic document is subjected to decay through various methods of montage. By erasing photographs of archaeological sites, what is left is its Detritus. Another ruin (SITE-2)* is thereby generated from within the old one, not necessarily one that has any historical narrative attached to it. The new monuments don’t have traces from the ancient texts etched onto them, hence preventing any sort of relation to it. SITE-1- A book found and acquired at a very famous ruin in India. SITE-2- The ‘new’ ruin(book) is created or generated from within the existing ruin by rephotographing the site and its surroundings.