Gayatri Sinha
Abadee dancing girl of the Oudh Court of Lucknow, Pl. 12, from the album The Beauties of Lucknow, c. 1874, Photograph, Image credit: Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library
Since the mid-nineteenth century, photographers in India have challenged the veracity of the medium as a tool of representation. Using it frequently to subvert rather than present the truth, Indian studios and individual photographers established a highly performative mode of (self) presentation. While western philosophers and theorists address the ‘death’ of the photograph, Indian studios sought perpetuity in a way that challenged temporality and the idea of a fixed time and place as photographic realism.
Join us for an illustrated lecture by Gayatri Sinha, writer and founder of Critical Collective, as she delves into photographs from the mid-nineteenth century to look at ideas of portraiture, performance, and the crowd as the unintended subjects of photography.
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