Other Asian Photographies
The only caveat might be Japan - there is nothing as comprehensive as
Photography in Japan 1853-1912 , for example.
But there is no major book on Chinese photography. Other Asian countries have only occasional volumes. This has made contextualizing the colonial Indian photographic experience much more difficult.
Thus the recent publication of Photographies East The Camera and its Histories in Southeast Asia, edited by Rosalind C. Morris, comes as a very welcome surprise. Ten essays by a number of scholars on early Indonesian, Thai, and Chinese photography in particular offer solid insights and directions for future Raj photographic research.
John Pemberton's The Ghost in the Machine, looks at Dutch images of Indonesian technical progress and contrasts them with narratives about the many actual deaths workers suffered in the operation of sugar crushing machinery. He weaves in a number of stunning ritualistic images of sacrificial animals offered by workers to the poorly maintained metal beasts. Given how Raj imagery has celebrated the glory of railroads, bridges and tunnels for example, one wonders about the counter-narratives of the suffering and dislocations unleashed in the construction of these edifices. [strong]Victorian Holocausts brilliantly covers the aftermath of the railroads - the way they took food out of but not in to agricultural India - but a systematic analysis like that of Ghost in the Machine has not yet been undertaken as far as I know.
James T. Siegel's The Curse of the Photograph: Atjeh 1901, about photography in the struggle for freedom in Atjeh (Aceh), Indonesia during and after Dutch rule is fascinating. It delineates the role that the absence of photographs played for freedom fighters on the island, and contrasts this, for example, with the photographic records left behind by more modern fighters and suicide bombers in the Middle East and South Asia. It firmly locates the role of imagery in cultural memory, and is one of the many essays that nicely extends its analysis to the present.
James L. Harris The Photography Complex: Exposing Boxer-Era China (1900-1901), Making Civilization is a well-illustrated piece on the Western imagery of the Boxer Rebellion. Although there are enough shocking popular images of life during the Raj, from famine victims to dead "raiders" for example, there is nothing quite like the shots of beheaded Chinese freedom fighters lying on the streets that appeared in popular magazines like Leslie's Weekly in the US. Hevia's look at lantern slides and the role of text and other instruments of interpretation is excellent. He too carries the story into the present, for these century old images continue to play a role in modern works on the Boxer rebellion, just as images taken during the Raj continue to color our understanding of its policies.
Rosalind Morris' Photography and the Power of Images in the History of Power: Notes from Thailand examines early images of Thailand's King, from an early daguerreotype (shown above on the book cover) to modern royal images and the role they played in recent political turmoil in Thailand. It is a thorough and empirical piece of analysis (in contrast with a very theoretical introduction!). Despite the endless celebration of photography of Maharajahs in India, I know of no similar studies of how changing portraits of a single ruling family say, continue to play a role in modern conflicts and discourse.
Carlos Rojas Abandoned Cities Seen Anew: Reflections on Spatial Specificity and Temporal Transience is an intriguing examination of vintage images in China today.
On a recent visit to China, I discovered that while there is both little serious research in English on old Chinese photography (following a lecture by an expert in Beijing), there is also an amazing amount of vintage imagery in popular culture. One saw images of old China on the walls of provincial restaurants, or on the hoardings of construction sites in Shanghai. There seemed to be a real interest in vintage photographs, more than one might see in India.
Rojas analysis locates this very well in the many contradictory dynamics of modernism in China with his review of a series of vintage images volumes on major Chinese cities put out by a Chinese publisher. Ironically, despite the greater availability of Indian images and similar forces reshaping society, there is no such series on old Indian cities available yet.
I particularly liked Rojas comparison of a photograph of shoes worn by a Guangzhou peasant woman with similar images by the painters Hans Holbein and Van Gogh, and his insightful look at how the smallest sign in an image ("self-combing women") broadcast large social messages.
Rojas also discusses Chinese calendar art in the early 20th century, which in its embrace of modernity and tradition had much in common with Indian calendar art of the same period, as discussed by Christopher Pinny in the superb Photos of the Gods: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India . A comparison of both traditions would, one day, be of enormous interest.
Photographies East: The Camera and Its Histories in East and Southeast Asia (Objects/Histories) is a first step in understanding separate Asian photographic traditions, and giving Raj photography a framework for comparing its output with those of other nations undergoing similar but not identical experiences.
