Druk clicks

Photography arrived in Bhutan half a century ago. And it took royal fascination to nurture the ‘new’ art, reports Amitava Sanyal.

"After a month of staring at it everyday, I couldn’t bear looking at the image anymore," says Kaushik Ramaswamy of ‘Class of 1958’, one of the earliest photographs clicked by a Bhutanese. Ramaswamy, a consultant of digital restoration who worked on more than 20 of the 86 images chosen by curator Pramod Kumar K.G. for the show ‘Bhutan: An Eye to History’, spent up to four hours a day on the image. "Some of the faces were obliterated — an eye and portions of two noses were missing. Nothing else took as long to restore," he says.

HT Image

‘Class of 1958, Gaupay, Paro’ was clicked by Sangay Wangchhuck (centre right), the person who introduced photography to Bhutan in the late 50s.Courtesy: Lily Wangchhuk

The picture, after all, is important. It was taken by Sangay Wangchhuck, the person who introduced the modern medium to sleepy Druk Yul, the Land of Dragons. But most of the 25,000 images from Wangchhuck Studio that are now with Lily, Sangay’s daughter, are in tatters. “My eldest brother, who took charge when father died, used to drag me into the small dark room to help him with his work. So I grew up hating photography,” says Lily, 38. “I started understanding its value only after my brother passed away.” Royal patronage helped. The third king appointed Wangchhuck his official photographer, allowing him to work on it full-time. This week, the fifth and current king inaugurated the show that leads with some of Wangchhuck’s pictures — and some of his own.