Debesh Banerjee, Indian Express, April 26, 2009
A collection of old pictures from Udaipur offers us a glimpse into early conventions of Indian photography.
In a picture taken in 1881 in Chittor, two rows of courtiers sit facing each other, uneasy before the mysterious gaze of the black box. The king, Maharana Sajjan Singh, is at the far end of the durbar, a speck before the Union Jack blazoned behind him. Ropes loop around the courtiers, constraining them in position and relative stillness for the long exposure needed for the photograph, a common practice in the early days of the camera’s presence in India. This is one of the 19,000 images that make up the pictorial archives of the Maharanas of Mewar, possibly the largest collection of royal photographs in India. About 129 images from the collection are on display at Bhagwat Prakash Gallery, at the City Palace Museum, Udaipur.
Photography didn’t take long to reach colonial India. Barely a year after Louis Daguerre invented the daguerrotype process of photography in 1839, Indians were discussing and practising this revolutionary technique. This collection captures moments from the reign of the various rulers of Mewar from 1850 to 1957; some of the earliest pictures date to the 1850s.This one taken in 1881 is perhaps the image of one of India’s earliest photographers, Mohan Lal, the younger son of a famous Udaipur court painter. The black box perched on the tripod is a few inches higher than him. He stands next to it,the right hand holding the lens cover with care, a mite quizzical at having the lens turned on him. His frizzy, tousled beard gives this photograph character as does his Rajasthani attire. The identity of the photographer is lost to history. “The scale of the works is the largest known for any royal family in India. The quality of the images is rare too,” says Pramod Kumar KG, who has curated the collection.
The photographs reveal several conventions of early Indian shutterbugs and the transition from portrait to photography as the most favoured system of royal record. By the mid-1850s, several court painters like Mohan Lal had taken to photography. There are no records existing on how he learnt the craft. Photographers who travelled to Udaipur and Mewar from other parts of British India as well as Parsi photographers who visited the nearby temple town of Nathdwara were probably his teachers. Lal was known for his exquisite portraits of Mewar’s nobility, from around 1860. “His style was influenced by European photographers who relied on natural lighting and a still background,” says Pramod. His elder brother, Shiv Lal, was known to paint over his photographs of hunting scenes.
Pramod’s team of conservationists began cataloguing the images in April last year. It will take till June to catalogue the entire collection. “It was a chance to preserve these images for posterity. I have never seen such a large royal collection of works. The time period is significant as it documents 100 years of the camera in Udaipur,” he says. He hopes to put out more photographs from the collection on display in the year ahead.
By early 20th century, many studios had sprouted across India, notable among them Devare and Sons in Bombay and the Royal Photographic Co. in New Delhi. Mohan Lal went on to set up his own photo studio in Udaipur (c. 1880) called Mohan Lal Photographers. The works of Royal Photographic Co. were marked by their quality of prints and beautifully mounted photos in gilded folios. Several photographs taken by the studio were printed in multiple copies and the studio enjoyed a steady patronage of the Maharanas. “There are no records on the whereabouts of the Royal Photographic Co. Many studios exist today by that name,” says Pramod.
Photographers had to form a close bond with their subjects to ensure that they posed and stayed still. This was a constraint of the medium at the time, as a long exposure (approximately four minutes) was needed to capture a frame. “Like in the courtroom picture, at times, they were hemmed in by ropes so that they didn’t move,” says Pramod.
Much like photography today, image-making was caught in the play between reality and pose, verisimilitude and, well, the tendency to Photoshop. Here’s Maharana Bhupal Singh (r.1930-1955) in the back seat of his personal 1930 Rolls Royce. In this photograph taken in 1935 by the Royal Photographic Co, the background is all fluffy clouds and it seems as if the king and his nobles are flying through the air. The photographer vignetted the negative, in other words, he masked out certain details to produce that effect.
Despite the informality, private lives of the rulers were not the subject of photography till about the 1980s. And only family members had access to private moments. A photographer who managed to capture her family in informal poses was Maharani Sushila Kumari of Udaipur, Maharana Bhagwat Singh’s wife (r. 1921-1984), who was an enterprising photographer herself. None of her pictures are on display but the palace collection includes some of her pictures taken during family picnics and of her children growing up. That’s one royal photographer we would like to be introduced to.