Lalu Ram, Gujjar, by Sandeep Biswas

The changing faces of multi-cultural India have been captured in the exhibition “Re-imaging: The People of India” that juxtaposes the works of colonial era photographers and modern day lensmen. Photographs taken in the 1850’s and 1860’s share the wall with images taken in the last few months by four contemporary Indian photographers.

“The exhibition relates to my study of the evolution of visual space with the advent of new technologies, from cameras with no shutter to high-speed electronic devices,” says Aditya Arya, the curator and Gurgaon-based photo archivist. Contrasting it with the original project, Aditya shares, “The original People of India project in 1850 is significant as it is the first photography project combing street with studio.”
The People of India is an 8-volume publication compiled between 1868 and 1875. This was the first photographic documentation of the ethnography of India, which began with Governor General Lord Canning’s desire to possess photographs of native Indians as a personal souvenir collection. The book offers an insight into how people from various castes, cultures and occupations in India were perceived by the British during the colonial rule.
The Jats, Gujjars and others featured in the modern photos, too, are trapped in their social and ethnic identities. But a closer look into their eyes reveals that these men and women are richer than the sum of their anthropological detail.
The subject raises the question of the ideologies of the past. John Waterhouse, one of the original photographers, complained of his Indian subjects who were “often uncooperative or uncomprehending subjects, who did not appreciate the necessity to remain still for the duration of the exposure.”
Although The People of India project covered large parts of India, Arya selected only the Delhi pictures from the vast collection. This enabled the exhibition’s present-day photographers to confine themselves to a single city as they searched for barbers, carpenters, dancers and snake charmers.
Among the four portraitists Mahesh Bhat, a Bengaluru-based photographer has been capturing the life and times of India for the last 25 years. He says, “Revisiting People of India was a wonderful project to do some slow photography and formal environmental portraiture. It also gave me the privilege to meet some of the most interesting people of old Delhi and soak in the village square of Sadar Bazar where life is un-hurried. I took on the role of a photographer and just saw my subjects as they were in that place and in that time, like the images of 1850’s.”
Dinesh Khanna has been a professional photographer for over 21 years. Talking about his subjects, Khanna remarks, “Caste should not dictate a person’s destiny and I wanted to make portraits of my subjects that showed them as individuals, recorded their professions and, most importantly, gave them respect and dignity. Keeping this in mind I have shot the current portraits.”
The only photographer to have shot using an analogue camera, Dileep Prakash shares, “The aesthetic treatment that I decided to give to my subjects is similar to the 19th century photographers — a wood-field large format camera, black and white sheet film, slow shutter speeds and warm tone prints.”
The fourth participant photographer Sandeep Biswas says, “It has been an overwhelming experience to be a part of such an important history in Indian photography.”
The original photos by the Britishers were accompanied with brief observations about the ‘natives’ like: “The Sonthal women are fat and short, and though not pretty according to the European idea of beauty, have a very pleasing expression of countenance.”