 Among the photographs featured in "Traces of India" is this image titled "The Moti Masjid (Pearl Mosque) in the Agra Fort," which was taken c. 1858-1865 by John Murray. |
More than 200 photographs of India's monuments and architecture from the British colonial era will be featured in a new exhibition opening at the Yale Center for British Art on Thursday, Oct. 16.
"Traces of India: Photography, Architecture, and the Politics of Representation" also includes engravings, prints, maps, rare books, postcards, posters and other artifacts from colonial India. The Yale Center for British Art is the first U.S. venue for the exhibition, which was organized by the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montréal.
The exhibition, its organizers say, presents photographs not merely as aesthetic objects or records of South Asia's architectural past, but as artifacts of the complex cultural and political forces that shaped colonial India.
A complementary exhibition titled "Company Culture: British Artists and the East India Company, 1770-1830," organized by the Yale Center for British Art, highlights works by British artists in India and on the South Asian subcontinent as a result of the East India Company's domination in the region. It also opens on Oct. 16.
Both exhibitions run until Jan. 11.
"Traces of India" will also be complemented by a scholarly symposium titled "Representing the Raj," which will take place Oct. 17 and 18, and by a series of lectures, films, concerts, performances and educational programs throughout the fall. (See related story.)
Arranged thematically, "Traces of India" weaves different narratives around major sites of Indian history to show the temporal nature of British photography in British-ruled India -- depicting architecture as a living entity that is preserved, collected, valued and transformed through time. These photographs of architecture were often vehicles for collective remembrance for the British community of its experience in India, note exhibit organizers, and reflected the presuppositions and prejudices of the colonial world.
"This exhibition represents an inquiry into the relation between early photographs of Indian architecture and the cultural imperatives of empire and after," explains Nicholas Olsberg, director of the CCA. The exhibition was curated by Maria Antonella Pelizzari, lecturer in photography at Concordia University and formerly associate curator of the CCA's Photographs Collection. The items on view were drawn from the CCA's collections as well as other public and private collections.
Photography was actively practiced in southeast India within a decade of the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839. Practitioners of the new technology included official government photographers such as Colonel Thomas Biggs and Captain Linnaeus Tripe, as well as amateurs like Dr. John Murray and commercial photographers such as Samuel Bourne and Felice Beato. These men created a vast body of work documenting the landscape and architecture of India, and are among the photographers whose works are on view.
In addition to images of Indian monuments and ancient architecture, the exhibition features photographs of the sites of the Indian Rebellion against the British (1857-1858); photographs from five world fairs -- from the Crystal Palace of 1851 to the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition in London -- which document how Indian architecture was presented to the west; as well as images from popular Indian culture (calendar art and clips of Bollywood films) that explore contemporary Indian visual culture and its ties to 19th-century photographs. The portion of the exhibition focusing on popular culture looks at how architecture participates symbolically in post-independence India, and how the 19th-century imagery of devotional sites and colonial sites is used today for new national purposes.
A 360-page book with more than 208 color and black-and-white illustrations accompanies the exhibition. This volume, which also features essays by scholars in a variety of fields, will be available at the Yale Center for British Art's Museum Shop. For information or to order, call (203) 432-2828.
The companion exhibition, "Company Culture: British Artists and the East India Company, 1770-1830," is drawn entirely from the Yale Center for British Art's permanent collections of paintings, works on paper and rare books. It examines the role played by artists in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in documenting the East India Company's imperial initiative and formulating the image of the British presence in India, exploring the themes of monumentality, image making, imperialism and national history in the initial period of British ascendancy in India.
Between 1770 and 1830, the British East Company possessed a commercial monopoly over the products of India and waged a battle for legitimacy of rule. At the same time, company employees presented India as a locus of artistic inspiration, providing new vistas and financial possibilities to such artists as Johann Zoffany, William Hodges, and Thomas and William Daniell. The exhibition investigates the importance of the Indian landscape for these artists and also includes a selection of portraits of key figures in the East India Company's commercial monopoly. In addition, the exhibition explores the representation of the "company towns" of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras.
"Company Culture" was curated by Morna O'Neill, a doctoral candidate in the Department of the History of Art.
The symposium "Representing the Raj" will explore the political and cultural messages present, both explicitly and implicitly, in the representations of people, places and institutions of British India.
It will begin on Friday, Oct. 17, at 5:30 p.m. with a keynote lecture by Arjun Appadurai, the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of International Studies and director of the Initiative on Cities and Globalization. His talk, titled "The Still Life of Empire," will focus on the tension between the realities of colonial force and the preoccupation with civilization as "still life" in British India. A reception and viewing of the exhibitions will follow.
Saturday's events will begin at 9 a.m. with opening remarks by Amy Meyers, director of the Yale Center for British Art, and Scott Wilcox, curator of prints and drawings at the center. Wilcox will also serve as the moderator of the symposium.
The morning program will feature talks by scholars on the topics "Romancing the Taj: Architecture, Photography and the Raj," "Houses of the Bharatpur Raja" and "Moral Geography and the Colonial Camera: Photographing Famine in India."
The afternoon session will include a tour of the "Company Culture" and "Traces of India" exhibitions, a talk on "Theatre of the Raj: India as Spectacle in the Coronation Durbars, 1877-1911," and a panel discussion moderated by Sara Suleri Goodyear, professor of English.
All talks will be held in the lecture hall of the Yale Center for British Art. Registration is required, but the fee will be waived for Yale faculty, staff and students. Seating is limited, and will be designated on a first-come, first-served basis.
The symposium has been organized in association with the South Asia Humanities Festival, with support from the South Asian Studies Council, the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, the Vinod Rustgi Family Fund and the Friends of the South Asian Studies Council at Yale.
For further information on the symposium, contact Jane Nowosadko, coordinator of programs, at (203) 432-0506 or jane.nowosadko@yale.edu.
A series of films about India, the British in India and Indians in Britain will be offered on Saturday afternoons at 2 p.m. beginning Oct. 25 and continuing through Dec. 20. Titled "From Hollywood to Bollywood," the series will feature such films as "Clive of India," "Lagaan: Once upon a Time in India," "A Passage to India," "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "Bend it Like Beckham." These explore both the historical experiences of Indians as well as the contemporary experience of South Asians in Britain.
In addition to such British directors as David Lean and Stephen Frears, the series also showcases Indian filmmaking by such directors as Satyajit Ray, Mira Nair and Ashutosh Gowariker.
All films will be shown in the lecture hall of the Yale Center for British Art.
Information on concerts, lectures and other special events in conjunction with the exhibitions will appear in the "Calendar" section of this newspaper.
The Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sunday, noon-5 p.m. Through mid-November, the center will be open until 7 p.m. on Wednesdays. Admission is free.
T H I S
Exhibits, symposium explore
culture of colonial India
'Traces of India'
'Company Culture'
'Representing the Raj'
Film series
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