This work is from the Re-take of Amrita series. 

Excerpt from Vivan Sundaram, Vivan Sundaram: Re-take of Amrita, Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2001:

'Umrao Singh took this remarkable photograph of himself in his study in Paris. A number of his self-portraits show him holding a magnifying glass. His pose here is reminiscent of the thinker in western art, which is often iconographically linked to the theme of melancholy. The disarray in the foreground of the photograph seems very deliberate. I bring in the other members of the family, each in her own self-absorbed state. Marie Antoinette, photographed by Umrao Singh soon after their marriage in Lahore, is reflected in the mirror reading a letter — again, a favourite theme in western painting. Indira with their cat, in the same flat, looks towards the viewer like an innocent. Amrita, looking askance, holds an interior dialogue with her father. 'I wish to return primarily in the interest of my artistic development. I now need new sources of inspiration and here you will perceive, Duci, how utterly mistaken you are when you speak of our lack of interest in India, in its people, its literature, all of which interests me profoundly and I wish to get acquainted with it,' she says, in a letter to her parents dated September 1934. Amrita’s photograph was taken by Karl Khandalavala in Bombay in 1936.'