The images featured in long Exposure–The Camera at Udaipur, 1857-1957 describe the evolution of photography and reflect the changing tastes of patrons and practitioners in that era. Author Mrinalini Venkateswaran shared details with Karan Bhardwaj
With great pride Maharana Fateh Singh of Udaipur poses along with his companions and a dead tiger. The photograph dates back to 1884 and was clicked by an unidentified photographer. It is now a part of a coffee table book featuring rare photographs of the maharanas of Udaipur, its majestic landscape and architecture. The book throws light on different photography processes used to preserve a century of heritage from 1857 to 1957.
“The book is based on the exhibition that we did in 2009. We put on display an array of images which showed the history of Udaipur and its royal legacy. In the book, we focussed not only on the way how camera technology changed but also how visuals were perceived and presented in the 19th century. We would also recognise the changing dynamics of ‘photojournalism’ in those 100 years,” said Mrinalini Venkateswaran, author of the book. “There’s a chapter on the process of documentation, primarily to teach students about the process. We have lots of publications of photography but not too many explain the technical aspect of the images,” she added.
Historical studies reveal that as early as 1818, over 20 years before the coming of camera to India in 1840, its precursor the camera obscura, an optical device used to draw visual exactitudes, was in use at Udaipur palaces. Colonel James Tod, the British political agent to the court of Mewar, wrote in Travels In Western India about how he explained the functions of this device to amuse the heir apparent of Udaipur, Maharaj Kumar Amar Singh, the elder son of Maharana Bhim Singh.
The collection in the book is a vast repository of photographic materials ranging from cartes-de-visite, glass-plate negatives, card photographs, albumen and silver gelatin prints, panoramas, stevengraphs, stereographs, platinum prints, painted photographs, photomontages and collages, dating from the 1850s to the early 20th century.
“People who did paintings were miniature painters, and they were quite specific about the details. They would also play with the background. For instance, artist Thakkar Singh took enlarged photographs of maharanas or when they went out on shikars (hunt), so he would put tense background to the images. In a way, they would create a piece of art with the original portraits and scenes,” shared Mrinalini.
The archive is significant in showcasing a range of early Indian photography techniques and many examples of the melding of these technologies with native and indigenous forms of art. Painted photographs, collages and photomontages modified and appropriated by local artists both at Udaipur and at the nearby temple town of Nathdwara, contributed enormously to the emergence of a new hybrid visual vocabulary that was, in time, seen all over India. “Proscenium stage-like backdrops, Western furniture and other accoutrements, were soon to create a distinct photographic idiom that was to influence and be influenced by a whole generation of other studios and photographers across the length and breadth of the country,” said the author. The process of identifying the subjects of these photographs has been facilitated to a large extent by handwritten inscriptions in the local language of Mewar.
On sourcing the timeline of the images, Mrinalini said, “The processes used, combined with the cards on which prints are mounted, often help identify the age of photographs in the collection. Textual sources which have aided the cataloguing process include the Haqeeqat Bahida or the daily accounts of the maharanas, together with manuscripts maintained at the Maharana Mewar Research Institute (MMRI) and its library.”