ART 305 - The Camera in South Asia

The paradox of photography is such that photographs reveal and conceal, obscure and illuminate, mutate and remain static. How do we read a photograph? What does it transmit? This course will investigate the development and reception of photography in South Asia, from the introduction of the camera in the mid-nineteenth century to the present. We will explore photography’s diverse iterations, including its role as an apparatus of colonial surveillance, a transcript of historical knowledge, a material technology, and a performative practice, to investigate how photographic practices evolved in response to shifting social, political, and aesthetic concerns. We will examine a wide range of case studies, including the works of nineteenth-century British and Indian photographers; vernacular uses of photography in local studios; the translation of the aesthetics of photography into painting (and vice versa), panoramas, stereographic views, early seminal films such as Raja Harishchandra (1913), and the works of contemporary photographers such as Dayanita Singh, Raghubir Singh, and Pushpamala N. We will also delve into photographic theory by reading Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Christopher Pinney’s writings. The aim of the course would be to develop the analytical tools for the evaluation of photography that take seriously the protean nature of photographic technology.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Prerequisite(s): ART 201
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Not offered: 2024-25
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).