Archives and Origins: The Material and Vernacular Cultures of Photography in India

Mahadevan, Sudhir

doi:10.1215/215820251_4-1-103

Trans Asia Photography

2013

DOI: 10.1215/215820251_4-1-103

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Archives and Origins: The Material and Vernacular Cultures of Photography in India

Sudhir Mahadevan¹

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Three Histories and Seven Lives: Investigating the Archives of South Indian Photo Studios, Tamil Nadu, 1880–1980

Headley¹

2022

Trans Asia Photography

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This article explores the diffusion and productions of commercial studio photography in South India (Tamil Nadu) from the time the first Indian-run studios opened in the 1880s up to the demise of analog photography—and thereby of many family-run studios—a century later. The particular focus of the article is on research carried out to constitute the stars.archive (Studies in Tamil Studio Archives and Society), the first digital archive of Tamil studio photography, which includes around forty-two thousand photographic images digitized inside studios, private homes, and secondhand shops all over Tamil Nadu. Through examination of the archive, the article suggests that a history of photography in this region needs to attend more closely to the specificities of appropriation of the photographic apparatus and its social uses by sourcing empirical data outside institutional archives. A closer examination of the content of the stars.archive reveals the diversification over time of the social uses of studio photography, far beyond the ubiquitous “studio portrait.”

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Three Histories and Seven Lives: Investigating the Archives of South Indian Photo Studios, Tamil Nadu, 1880–1980

Headley¹

2022

Trans Asia Photography

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Invisible Journey

Nixon¹

2022

Trans Asia Photography

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This essay considers a set of photographs taken in early 1947 in Lahore and in Punjab when the region was still united in India. The images traveled from India to Australia in 1948, and a single image journeyed to the world's first Partition Museum in Amritsar in 2017. They represent a moment of tangled relations between object, history, migration, and technology. The photographer was young and, like his subjects, was unaware of the horror that would erupt outside the frame a few months after the photographs were taken. The British government placed great burdens on the shoulders of young men, as hinted at in the images. Seventy-five years later, viewers are privy to that knowledge, which lends a layer of pathos to the images. This essay draws on oral history and family photographs to explore a time, experience, and place just before one of the great tragic migrations of twentieth-century history.

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Les photographes ambulants

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2015

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Des photographes voyageurs aux photographes ambulantsLes études éparses consacrées à la photographie pratiquée par des ambulants et des forains abordent plusieurs aspects de cette profession, analysée essentiellement sous l'angle d'une pratique décalée, insolite, marginale 1 . Plusieurs recherches se sont consacrées aux aspects techniques de cette production, en particulier, pour la période ancienne, la ferrotypie et l'essor de la photographie imprimée sur cartes postales, dites carte photo (Armand 2011 ; Baudrain 2013). C'est surtout la pratique des photographes installés dans les fêtes foraines qui a focalisé l'attention ainsi que les relations de cette esthétique singulière avec les avant-gardes. La position spécifique de la photographie dans les foires en plein essor durant l'entre-deux-guerres, lieux caractéristiques du divertissement et de la culture de masse, a été envisagée le plus souvent à travers la Les photographes ambulants Techniques & Culture, 64 | 2015

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Archives and Origins: The Material and Vernacular Cultures of Photography in India

Cited by 5 publications

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Three Histories and Seven Lives: Investigating the Archives of South Indian Photo Studios, Tamil Nadu, 1880–1980

Three Histories and Seven Lives: Investigating the Archives of South Indian Photo Studios, Tamil Nadu, 1880–1980

Invisible Journey

Les photographes ambulants

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