An exhibition of early portrait photography in India opened in Berlin today, showing a collection of historic photography from parts of colonised India that was considered lost in the Second World War and retrieved from oblivion in the early 1990s. With some 250 exponents, the collection offers fascinating and revealing insights on portraiture in India in the second half of the 19th Century.
The exhibition is organised by Berlin’s Kunstbibliothek, the Ethnologic Museum and the Museum for Asian Arts, and its curation in fact shows an interdisciplinary approach involving different specialists. “The biggest challenge was in asking ourselves ‘what are we really looking at here?’” says Katrin Specht, assistant curator at the Ethnologic Museum. “Not only colonial history but also media history is being told in these photographs, as well as art history, apparent in the very European approach to portraiture, and other ways of showing that relate to early modernism. And there’s an ethnological aspect, of course, especially in the photos of indigenous Indian peoples”, she adds.
The collection is divided into sections starting with Indian aristocracy, a class which was instrumental for the colonisers. Maharajas, Begums and other nobility are portrayed with their suites, as are British huntsmen with their trophies. Interestingly, hunting was perceived as an act of benevolence by indigenous groups who lived in the jungle.
Another section is dedicated to the ethnic and religious diversity of the Indian subcontinent, showing Parsees, Hindus, Muslims, Jews and Christians, photographed in studios within elaborate settings of European taste. The caste system was a favourite motif for the British photographers who set up studios across India, and so another section is centred on the different vocations practiced according to caste, with a large focus on theatre, musicians, dancers and courtesans, whose position within the caste system was completely distorted by the colonisers.
Sadhus are a heterogeneous and ambiguous group within Indian society. To escape the cycle of reincarnation, Sadhus are men who chose renunciation and so embody the highest religious ideal of Hinduism. The exhibition includes some striking photographs of self-mortification, like a man bearing a metal grid around his neck after taking an oath to never sleep lying down, or two young yogis with padlocks on their crotches.
The last section, devoted to Adivasi, or aboriginal Indians, is a room full of discovery. 84 million Indians are regarded today as Adivasi, and while the Bhil people of northern India number around 2 million, there are only 1000 members of the Toda people of the south. These photographs in particular conjure a romanticised (European) ideal of man and nature. A supposedly savage character is highlighted in the photographs, while clearly discernible indicators of culture are neglected. A series of anthropological photography, pseudo-scientific methods of comparative studies, show bodies and heads shot rigidly from different directions, measuring tape in view.
The Colonial Eye Museum for Photography, Berlin 20.7 – 21.10.2012