'Nicobar figures to ward off evil', from Katherine S Tuson's photograph album. © Horniman Museum: London

Brighton Museum & Art Gallery holds significant collections of objects and images from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, two island groups in the Bay of Bengal, South Asia. Most were collected by three British individuals - Richard Carnac Temple, Edward Horace Man, Katherine S Tuson - who formed part of colonial communities which existed on the islands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The kinds of objects collected and photographs taken reflect the preoccuptions of the time; preoccupations influenced by British colonial rule and the emerging science of anthropology. The islands' diverse indigenous communities were viewed as 'primitive' people whose bodies, language, objects and cultural traditions could be studied in order to illuminate an assumed evolutionary process that led to the 'pinnacle' of contemporary European culture.

Despite the Eurocentric attitude which informed their collection, the objects and images today offer a unique insight into a historical encounter between Britain and the inhabitants of the Andamanese and Nicobarese islands and a glimpse of ways of life already undergoing great changes.