Dileep Prakash's Memory-Laden Photography
A few nights ago, I had the the chance to see a presentation by one of India's most important contemporary photographers, Dileep Prakash. He has a stunning series of color photographs of Anglo-Indians currently touring Europe's finest galleries. In a few months, a new exhibition opens at Photoink in Delhi. This time his subject is the boarding schools of India in black and white.Read moreBourne and Shepherd Still Running
An interesting recent article, Clicking Up the Pieces, in the Times of India picks up the fascinating thread of one of the most famous photographic studios in the world, Bourne & Shepherd in Kolkata.Read more
NWFP R.I.P.
The official change in name of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa this month may be the final nail in the coffin of the Raj. If only.Rather, an attempt to change names and wipe out the past is a twisted recognition that the politics of the Raj have continued into the present. They are likely to stay with us well into another century.Read more
Shades of Matisse
When I first saw this photograph, I knew it was by an Indian photographer. The overwhelming presence of the pattern, the unselfconscious stare of the woman cleaning her teeth, the angle - these were not things you would expect from a European photographer. The compression of planes reminded me of Matisse and the Japanese prints that inspired him.Read moreInside a Ceylonese Graphite Mine
This photograph shows men working at a graphite mine in Sri Lanka [Ceylon]. It probably was taken at Bogala, then the country's principal graphite mine in the 1880s. Graphite, a form of carbon, is used in pencils and numerous industrial goods and compounds.Read more
A Lurid Magic Lantern Slide
The Sepoy Rebellion by Joseph Boggs Beale, a powerful magic lantern slide, was published in 1899. Beale was America's foremost Victorian magic lantern artist. It was his only slide of India among the 2,000 that he drew.Read more
loot
s. & v. Plunder; Hind. lūṭ, and that from Skt. lotra, for loptra, root lup, 'rob, plunder'; [rather luṇṭ, 'to rob'].