Colonial Lens: Unraveling India's Multifaceted History Through Photography

An exhibition currently running at Bikaner House offers a visual feast while engaging with the layered histories of India's diverse communities through colonial ethnographic photographs. Curated by historian Sudeshna Guha, 'Typecasting: Photographing the Peoples of India 1855-1920' seeks to reexamine and challenge the colonial typecasting that categorized India's various tribes and cultures.

The exhibition features nearly 200 rare photographs and photographic materials, including pioneering work by field photographers like Benjamin Simpson and Samuel Bourne. It spans across geographies, capturing communities from the Lepcha and Bhutia tribes in the northeast to the Afridis of Sind in the northwest and the Todas of the Nilgiris in the south, crafted between 1855 and 1920.

At its core, the exhibition showcases selections from 'The People of India', an eight-volume photograph series compiled during the colonial period. While the process of classification evident in these images continues to provoke debates, the exhibition aims to inspire fresh inquiries into early photography and anthropology, beyond the overt colonial gaze.