‘Typecasting: Photographing the People of India’: An exhibition critically examines the ethnographic image

The link between the rise of photography and anthropological studies in the 1850s is inextricable particularly in India. The camera became a means to explore, investigate and classify the diversity of the subcontinent. In fact, it was the People of India albums that launched the genre of anthropological photography. It was undertaken by the British government in the 1860s to document the races and tribes of India formally, some of which was to be presented at the International Exhibition in London in 1862. Among the photos that made their way there were those by Lt Willoughby Wallace Hooper of the 7th Madras Light Cavalry, who photographed tribes near “Ruttunpore and the Gonds, Chumars and Cowars”. His images are significant not just for the way they were taken—in a makeshift studio-like setting in the field—but for also giving rise to a trope of the “primitive native scared of the unknown” when the tribes were resistant to being photographed.

These perceptions and purposes continued to drive colonial enterprises to “categorise and describe the plethora of tribes, castes and communities along regional and racial lines,” states Ashish Anand, CEO and MD, DAG in a note. The ongoing exhibition at the Bikaner House in Delhi, and the accompanying book, seeks to bring such tropes under scrutiny and “make the material available for fresh interpretation by new audiences,” he adds. Titled Typecasting: Photographing the People of India 1855-1920, the show [on view till 15 February] has been curated by historian Sudeshna Guha. It features nearly 200 photos and rare material of early Indian photography in the country and showcases communities such as the Lepchas, Bhutias, Afridis, Todas, Parsis, and more.

On display are also a selection of folios from The People of India albums, an eight-volume series of photos and descriptive letterpress compiled by John Forbes Watson and John William Kaye published between 1868 and 1875. These feature work by field photographers in India such as Benjamin Simpson, James Waterhouse, William Willoughby Cooper and the little-known commercial firm Shepherd and Robertson.“Critically examining the role of photography in shaping—and questioning—social typologies in colonial India, a range of photographic material—prints, cabinet cards, cartes-de-visite, postcards, folios and albums; and also published books—displayed in this exhibition reveal how unstable social categories can be despite their role in creating them in the first place,” states the gallery note.

Through the curation and her essay in the book on critical authorship dissecting the impact of the creation of colonial typologies, Guha aims to highlight that typology is not a ‘natural reality’ out there to be physically captured and recorded. In her view, ‘type making’ entailed putting all kinds of disparate things together, isolating communities from others near them, and creating descriptions about them through prevalent biases of race morality, and more.The exhibition asks a visitor to look closely at the photographs to see the ambiguities they throw open, the events of encounters which constitute photography, and the ‘agency’ of the sitters.“The exhibition also draws attention to the continued prevalence of this practice, administratively, in post-colonial India, as the new People of India series published by the Anthropological Survey of India shows us so clearly,” she says.

The images and material on showcase are significant not just for their content but also for the use of early photographic techniques. For instance, the images by William Johnson, such as the Brahmin Ladies, which appeared in the Indian Amateur Photographic Album (IAPA) are the earliest type photographs from the Bombay Presidency. According to Guha, the IAPA series in its entirety (36 issues, 1856-59), or even a large part of it, is no longer to be found in any Indian archive, library or collection. So the photos on display stand out for their rarity. The two volumes of The People of India and the individual folios of photos—representative of the entire series—are equally valuable exhibits of one of the most ambitious photo-documentation projects of the 19th century.

She also lists as a highlight the small souvenir, Illustrated Historical Album, comprising folios from a little known photographic album created by the Laknavi photographer Daroga Abbas Ali. Published in 1874, it features images of the performing women in the Lucknow court. “Significantly, through these photos of the paris (fairies) performing in the Indra Sabha (which are the captions on the photos), Abbas Ali was able to recreate the magical world of Awadh and the court of Wajid Ali Shah, and possibly for the deposed nawab and his nobility in Calcutta, providing consolation of his colossal loss. These albums are also some of the earliest souvenirs produced in India,” elaborates Guha.

It is not just the photos but the accompanying material that is also significant. Such as the collection of postcards of Moorli Dhar and Sons of Ambala, Skeen and Scowen, Higginbotham and Co, and of some of the women artists such as Gauhar Jan, the first female singer to have a gramophone record in her name. “These postcards remind us to enquire into histories of women and photography in the 19th century of which virtually nothing is known,” she adds.

The exhibition features works by both European and Indian photographers such as Hurrychand Chintamon, S Hormusjee and Jamsetjee Byramjee, Deen Dayal, Abbas Ali, Gobindram Oodeyram, S Mahadeo and Sons. One wonders if the latter tried to break free of colonial typologies. In Guha’s view, the Indian photographers followed the contemporary fashions of photographing people, in certain poses and style. All photographers hoped to sell their photographs, so they largely made ‘beautiful and saleable’ pictures. “The exhibition also reminds us that the British worked in the field with Indian assistants, whose perspectives on what they thought about ‘photographing types’ of their ‘native fellow men’ we do not know,” she adds. “...Lastly, these photographs are objects on the move. They are performative, and rather than looking into them for meanings, we need to see the ambiguities they throw open.”