Capturing the Subcontinent

Introduction

This installation features photographs of India (later India and Pakistan) from the 1860s to the present day. These works reveal both the seismic political changes of the era and the continuing importance of artistic traditions. Many of these images are painted, staged, or manipulated, undermining the supposed objectivity of photography and elucidating changing ideas about how we understand and value images.

The Curatorial Process

This set of objects was installed in three cases in the Arts of India gallery that previously held textiles and miniature paintings. The installation primary centers of contemporary Pakistani artist Huma Bhabha’s Reconstructions Portfolio. The portfolio consists of sixteen photographs that she took of the Pakistani landscape, modified with ink drawings of towering figures and large feet. The haunting, conceptual images evoke various photography traditions in South Asia, including the courtly practice of painting photography, the colonial bureaucracy’s investment in landscape and archaeological photography, and fellow contemporary artists’ subversive approaches to these various traditions. While I initially considered featuring the portfolio in Synthetic Anatomies, my supervisors allowed me to build a separate installation around these prints for the Arts of India gallery, contextualizing them with other South Asian objects and bringing a new perspective to the gallery, which primarily focused on Hindu and Buddhist objects.

Additional Images