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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Photo Essay | We the people, then and now
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Photo Essay | We the people, then and now

A forthcoming exhibition juxtaposes the work of yesteryear photographers and today's lensmen

Gujjars (top) form an ethnic group that has spread to many parts of South Asia. Lallu Ram Gujjar (above) was spotted along with Ronald McDonald by photographer Sandeep Biswas at the PVR complex in Saket. “He had come to Delhi from his village in Rajasthan to join the army but became a security guard,” says Biswas. “Later, he took up selling chanas, which gave him more earning. In this photo, I wanted to contrast the fast food with traditional snacks. Both sell equally well.” The chana seller’s mobile phone number is painted on his snack box. Photo: Sandeep BiswasPremium
Gujjars (top) form an ethnic group that has spread to many parts of South Asia. Lallu Ram Gujjar (above) was spotted along with Ronald McDonald by photographer Sandeep Biswas at the PVR complex in Saket. “He had come to Delhi from his village in Rajasthan to join the army but became a security guard,” says Biswas. “Later, he took up selling chanas, which gave him more earning. In this photo, I wanted to contrast the fast food with traditional snacks. Both sell equally well.” The chana seller’s mobile phone number is painted on his snack box. Photo: Sandeep Biswas

A photograph never grows old," said Albert Einstein. “You and I change, people change all through the months and years, but a photograph always remains the same."

But the way we look at photos does change. A forthcoming exhibition, Re-imaging: The People of India (1850-2013), will display pictures taken in the 1850s and 1860s next to images taken in the last few months by four photographers. The nine-day exhibition, which starts 18 April, is being organized by the India Photo Archive Foundation. According to curator Aditya Arya, a Gurgaon-based archivist, it will present the 19th century “bunnea", “marwaree" and “scarf maker", as seen by British lensmen, along with the 21st century Baniya, Marwari and weaver, as seen by Indian photographers.

“The project interprets our people from widely contrasting standpoints in terms of space and time," says Arya. “The ones who ruled us and their observation and now our own self-reflection."

The People of India, an eight-volume work, was compiled in 1868-75 by military and civilian British photographers. Conceived as a personal collection of the governor general, Lord Charles John Canning, it became an official British government publication. “This was the first photographic documentation of the ethnography of India," says the exhibition catalogue.

In the 20 colonial-era images selected, the subjects look as expressionless as the National Geographic portraits of yesteryear when white photographers explored the lands of brown people and captured them in chadors and topis.

In a short essay, Caste And Camera: 163 Years Later, in the catalogue, artist Madhav Tankha, who designed the catalogue, writes: “The colonial photographs are…marked by a lack of focus on the facial expressions of their subjects as well as on larger environmental elements not relevant to their social identity. Thus, dress and occupation (and in later colonial projects, bone structure) become important for the photographer."

The Jats, Gujjars and others featured in the 60 modern photos, too, are trapped in their social and ethnic identities. But you only have to invite yourself into the intimacy of their eyes to discover that these men and women are richer than the sum of their anthropological detail.

Although The People of India project covered large parts of India, Arya selected only the Delhi pictures from the vast collection. This enabled the exhibition’s present-day photographers to confine themselves to a single city as they searched for barbers, carpenters, dancers and snake charmers.

Among the four portraitists, Mahesh Bhat’s previous work includes the profile of a woman suicide bomber in Sri Lanka. Dinesh Khanna, with experience in advertising and street photography, is trained in both structured and spontaneous camerawork. Sandeep Biswas is the group’s only professionally trained artist, and Dileep Prakash the only one to use an analogue camera.

“There was a disconnect between the portraits done in the 1850s and what I was doing in 2013," says Prakash. “As a medium I tried to connect with that work by using a similar aesthetic treatment, involving black and white film, slow shutter speeds and an old lens."

The sepia-stained photos by the Britishers were originally accompanied with brief observations about the “natives". Sample this: “These men (hill porter) eat anything except the flesh of the ox and its kind, and are filthy in their habits, often not washing or changing their clothes for weeks together. As a class, they are as poor as they are ignorant."

Perhaps it is those photographers who were ignorant.

Re-imaging: The People of India (1850-2013) will show from 18-26 April, 11am-7pm, at the Art Gallery, Conference Block, India International Centre, 40, Max Mueller Marg, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi.

Photographs courtesy India Photo Archive Foundation

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Published: 12 Apr 2013, 07:58 PM IST
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