Delhi: DAG to display colonial ethnographic photos from 1855-1920 at Bikaner House

Curated by historian Sudeshna Guha, the exhibition –- “Typecasting: Photographing the Peoples of India 1855–1920” –- will be open till February 15 and feature 200 samples of early Indian photography in the country.

The DAG (formerly Delhi Art Gallery) is set to organise an exhibition showcasing collections of colonial ethnographic photographs, depicting India’s diversity from 1855–1920, at the Bikaner House starting January 30. The exhibition will be open for public on January 31 and will throw light on how photography shaped colonial stereotypes.

One of the photos that will be displayed. (DAG)

Curated by historian Sudeshna Guha, the exhibition –- “Typecasting: Photographing the Peoples of India 1855–1920” –- will be open till February 15 and feature 200 samples of early Indian photography in the country.

“Typecasting: Photographing the Peoples... brings critical scrutiny to the histories and errors of typecasting, and makes available the historical photographs for reflection on the systems of classification and on the typologies that were created in the colonial period, which photography made to seem real and natural,” Guha said.

The exhibition maps the diversity of people across a vast geography from the northeastern Lepcha and Bhutia tribes to the Afridis of Sind in the northwest and the Todas of the Nilgiris in the south.

“The exhibition will also showcase photographs of people from rich Parsee and Gujarati communities to those from the lowest-income groups such as dancing girls, coolies, barbers and snake charmers. The exhibition demonstrates that early ethnographic photography in India not only documented the country’s diversity but actively defined the social and economic groups,” a press note describing the exhibition, shared by the DAG, mentioned.

At the core of the collection will be a selection of folios (a book made with large sheets of paper) from The People of India, an eight-volume series of photographs, compiled by John Forbes Watson and John William Kaye and published between 1868 and 1875.

It features revolutionary field photographers of India, such as Benjamin Simpson, James Waterhouse, William Willoughby Hooper and John Burke. The exhibition will also feature albumen and silver-gelatin prints by other eminent photographers such as Samuel Bourne, Charles Shepherd, Darogha Abbas Ali, Lala Deen Dayal, GR Lambert and Co., Edward Taurines and Hurrychand Chintamon, covering a broad time span from 1855 to 1920.

Ashish Anand, CEO and Managing Director of DAG, said, “Over the last decade, DAG has been collecting early ethnographic photographs (along with other genres of early photography in India) and now possesses one of the largest collections in the country. It could be said that the camera swiftly became the primary instrument for investigation in the field of modern anthropology, and the means by which representatives of the subcontinent’s diverse communities were captured in images for analysis and classification. Looking back, it is obvious that this process was problematic on various levels. The aim of this exhibition is to encourage fresh interpretations by new audiences.”

Guha pointed out that the exhibition will show uncertainties in type-making and encourage seeking a visual history of the early photography of India beyond the colonial gaze. “Through photographs of the colonial endeavours of typecasting the people of India, the exhibition draws attention to the construct that is a typology, or a class. Photographs mean differently to different viewers, in different circumstances of viewing,” the curator observed.