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The Rediff Special/Aseem Chaabra

The Raj through photographers' lenses

In the late-1980s, a fire in Shimla burnt down the largest and perhaps oldest photography studio in India -- Bourne and Shepherd. The fire also destroyed what some considered was the largest archive of historical Indian photographs.

This single event led Ebrahim Alkazi, the former director of the National School of Drama and an avid collector of contemporary Indian art, to make an active effort to build his own historical archive collection of photographs of British India, including those taken by photographers commissioned by Bourne and Shepherd.

"He began to notice them at flea markets, with book dealers and at auction houses and started to pick them up," Esa Epstein, Executive Director of the Alkazi Collection and Sepia International Inc, said in a recent interview. Sepia International is the name given to a 2,000 square feet commercial photo gallery run by Alkazi in New York City's Chelsea section.

Today Alkazi's private collection contains about 45,000 single images, albums and photographically illustrated books of 19th and early 20th century primarily from the Indian subcontinent. Besides New York, the collection is also housed in London and New Delhi. In New York, scholars are given access to the archive and a research library.

For its first exhibition in New York, Sepia International is displaying over 130 photographic representations from the Alkazi Collection. Called 'Re-Orientations: Photography from South Asia,1845-1920', the exhibition runs through April 24. While portions of the collection have been exhibited in Bombay and New Delhi in the past few years, this is the first time the works are being displayed outside India.

"Alkazi chose the word 're-orientation' in the title," said Epstein. "He wanted to present the material in a different way, reinterpreting it."

The exhibition could be interpreted as the history of the British in India through the development of photography, from the early daguerrotypes -- the beginning of photography in India, to silver prints and albums documenting the mutiny of 1857, the pomp and pageantry of the colonial power, the explorations of the frontiers, and finally commercial photography, including hand painted portraits of unknown Indians.

Photography arrived in India in early 1840, less than two years after its invention in Europe. Commercial photo studios were established in major cities where daguerrotype portraits were popular. By the 1850s, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta each had a photographic society with hundred of members displaying their works at annual exhibitions.

However, the first instances of the camera as a witness to history are found in photographs taken during the 1857 mutiny. A vast panoramic view of damaged city of Lucknow is one of the major highlights of the exhibition. The eight separate photographs laid out together were taken in 1858 by the Italian photographer Felice Beato, who had earlier covered the Crimean War.

The text on the wall of the exhibition states that the 1857 "rebellion was the first instance when the camera was used as a political instrument to assert the authority of the ruling power and to proclaim its triumphs to the world at large." Other examples in the exhibition of documentation of the colonial power's authority include photographs of the durbar held in Delhi to honor King George V and Queen Mary -- the first British monarch to visit India -- and stills of captured weapons and infantries during the Afghan wars of the late-1800s.

The other focus of the collection and the exhibition is the use of camera to further the racist belief of the colonial power that physiognomic features of the subjects indicated their specific traits of characters.

Started innocently as souvenirs of memories of the exotic land, these photographs took on a sinister tone, when Lord Canning, the first Viceroy of India and his Political and Secret Department undertook a special project to study these stills.

This portion of the exhibition includes group photographs taken in the 1870s and 1880s in Ceylon, Sikkim, Simla -- "hill women" with their heads covered, each wearing large bangle-like nose rings. Also displayed are works of Bourne & Shepherd's photographers, including one of a group of Nagas with their traditional jewelry and headgear.

Epstein acknowledged that the works of major European photographers of the time were "imperialistic in nature, but the sheer technical and aesthetic brilliance cannot be denied."

The pomp and pageantry of the Indian rulers is best covered through the works of Raja Lala Deen Dayal. Trained as an engineer in Rourkee, Dayal was later appointed the official photographer to the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad. His works originally available in album form capture the Nizam and his guests, including the Grand Duke Alexander of Russia, in formal and informal settings, and a most amusing photograph taken at a fancy dress ball in 1890.

The exhibition continues with exploration of Indian monuments -- including Qutub Minar and the Victory Tower of Chittorgarh, photographs celebrating the picturesque quality of India's hill stations, and reports from the Indian frontiers. One such photograph shows a vast valley in the Himalayas with a Tibetan monastery in the foreground and Mount Everest in the background. The photograph was taken in 1920 ("the youngest work" in the collection -- according to Epstein) by an exploration team that had the blessing of the Dalai Lama. It is one of the rare views of the Everest taken from inside China.

A key concern for Epstein is to ensure that the photographs are preserved. To that end all the lights in the gallery and the research library are UV protected and natural light is blocked. It is for that reason that Epstein and Alkazi have developed tight screening procedures or approving scholars and others who have access to the collection.

"There is a joke between Alkazi and me," she said. "He says, 'Esa don't worry. These photographs are more than one hundred years old and they have been in India.' But we have to ensure that while we build the collection we also conserve it."

Sepia International Inc is at 148 West 24th Street, 11th Floor, New York 10011

( Aseem Chaabra has been published in The Hindustan Times, The Times of India and a number of American publications)

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