Prachi Gupta
The earliest photo studios in India primarily served colonial interests or catered to the desires of the royal and the wealthy. Over time however, the experience of going to a studio was to become more accessible, even commonplace. And the studio became a space that catered to a range of people with a range of reasons for taking photographs. Today, the photo studio is a dying institution with limited applications. Many of its stories and those of the people it documented remain alive only in rarely preserved studio archives, museums and personal collections.
To celebrate World Photography Day, MAP is looking at the history of studio photography in India through its collection. Join Prachi Gupta, an archivist at MAP, who explores the photo studio as an entry point into picturing the transition of image-making and dissemination in a rapidly modernising India.
Archivist, Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), Bangalore
Prachi Gupta is an Archivist at the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), Bangalore. She handles the photography collection that ranges from the 1850s to the current time with a number of one lakh plus objects. The position entails tasks related to archiving, cataloguing, research, and exhibitions.
She completed her Masters in Photography Design from the National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar in 2018 and has been living and working in Bangalore since. Her artistic interest lies in history, archives and performance, which she continues to explore through her work.
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