Photo Exhibition In Delhi: Earliest Photographs Of India

Photography, now what we consider as art, was celebrated as the 'pencil of nature', which allowed, 'completeness of detail and correctness of perspective.' Photography was a medium to capture and record the facts, and it still is, however, with time, the meaning of photography also changed.It was earlier associated with true investigation and was heavily used for field surveys throughout the Indian subcontinent by the East India Company. The colonial view considered Indian history as "a cloud of fables", it did not believe its ancient texts. Thus, photographs became their medium of the "British discovery of India's real history".The ongoing exhibition at DAG, 'Histories in the Making: Photographing Indian Monuments, 1855-1920', captures the collection of such photos. Through these photos, it tells a story of how photography evolved in India and created an understanding of India's history. Within a few months of the camera's invention in Europe, it arrived in the Indian subcontinent. The earliest photographs were daguerreotypes and calotypes of ancient ruins and art objects.

Are Photographs The Utmost Truth?

Photographers like Thomas Biggs, William Pigou, Andre Neill, and Johnson and Henderson in the mid-1850s were using photography as a medium of information. "Although photography’s launch was celebrated as being able to produce ‘images drawn by nature’s most subtle pencil, the light ray’, photographers have always drawn upon the technology’s potential of representation. Irrespective of the trope of objectivity, and realism a debate that began with the beginning of photographic practices was whether photography was an art or a science," says historian, archaeologist and the curator of the exhibition Sudeshna Guha. She explains the importance of recalling Henry Fox Talbot's description of photography, which is 'the art of fixing a shadow'. Guha points out that the early histories of the photographic discourse inform us of the many ways in which realism was created photographically.Also Read:

Talking about Felice Beato, one of the celebrated photographers of those times, who captured the aftermath of the 1857 sepoy mutiny, or what some call the First War of Independence, Guha points out how despite considering photography as a way to capture the truth, the photographer's bias kicks in. Beato, as a field photographer, while capturing the aftermath of the sepoy mutiny, dug up corpses of Indian rebels at Lucknow's Sikandar Bagh to better define his pictures. Guha points out that his infamous photograph was met with disapproval by the British government. The Colonial Bias

Photography was started by the British administration as a means of collecting information about the 'others'. The othering is quite prominent in Christopher Pinney's book The Coming of Photography in India, where we see many photographs of families, individuals and communities from the Indian subcontinent being documented. There is a hint of orientalism one cannot ignore. The book features a photograph of an Andamanese group with their "keeper" Mr Homfray, taken in a studio in Calcutta. A note that describes the studio session mentions how the Andamanese were made to strip for the photo and pose naked. This was done to reaffirm the belief that it was the British who brought civilisation to the Indian subcontinent. It was also done to substantiate that Church missions gave white cotton garments to the natives they had "rehabilitated".Guha points out the similar gaze in Linnaeus Tripe's photographs, which were captured to show how the British administration of the country has been beneficial for the natives.

"Additionally, the view of Indians standing next to the monuments, often their bodies used as a scale for gauging the height of the building, has been read by historians of photography as illustrating ‘the native amongst his ruins that were rescued for him by the British’," she explains. However, Guha also points out that many native photographers often took similar images of the monuments and ruins. The Coming Of Nationalist PhotographyBy the end of the 19th century, commercial studios of Indian photographers outnumbered those of the British and Europeans. Narayan Virkar, who had a studio in Bombay, present-day Mumbai, during the 1910s was celebrated as a nationalist photographer. He was able to recreate photographs that conveyed the heroic stories of the monuments. "Virkar is resurrected as a nationalist photographer today. What we do see in his photographs of the Raigadh fort is possibly the inversion of the premise of visual memory, which colours the imagery of Tripe and Beato," explains Guha. His photos convey the sheer force of Maratha architecture and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's power. Photography As Art

While photography vs art could be the endless debate of the 19th century, it did not stop photographers from creating art with a camera. Samuel Bourne, who brought the concept of photographs as art with his series of Himalayan terrain between 1863 and 1866, framed Indian landscapes as beautiful and controllable. However, the exhibition does point out that critics have found a "visual allegory of colonialist viewpoints" in those photographs too."The debate about whether photography is an art or a science imbued the discourse of photography throughout the 19th century and is best represented in an article Lady Eastlake wrote on the picturesque in 1857 in the Quarterly Review. Photographers however saw themselves as developing the art of photography. Many studios qualified themselves as artist-photographers, and the aesthetic of the picture has always remained at the core of the practice of photography," noted Guha. India To The World

One of the most interesting sections of the exhibition is 'Photographs as Currency', which showcases postcards, cabinet cards, and cartes-de-visite or "calling cards". Guha points out that postcards allowed the dissemination of information about the Indian monuments to the world. "Through their collection and circulation, much of architectural histories of India and South Asia, was now known in the contemporary world. Whereas, cartes-de-visite and cabinet cards featured portraits of people." The exhibition is on at DAG, Janpath Road, Windsor Place, New Delhi, till October 19, from 10.30 am to 7 pm.