Painted Photographs: Coloured Portraiture in India

Author: Ebrahim Alkazi

Publisher: Mapin Publishing (2008)

Binding: Paperback, 88 pages

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This slim and beautiful catalogue is packed with 60 extraordinary full-page images. They reveal something of the specific genius of Indian photography: colorization.

One of the first important books on early Indian photography from 1982,

Through Indian Eyes, featured numerous hand-colored images, usually made for local Indian patrons. Nearly all the books that have followed have, however, showcased the black-and-white or sepia photographs mostly found in Western archives and collections. This is what most appealed to European inhabitants and collectors, and consequently most of the researchers and scholars since then.

Hopefully this work breaks the trend.

Painted Photographs was published in connection with an exhibition held at the Brunei Galleries at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in the summer of 2008. Two essays accompany the catalogue. Rahaab Allana reviews the history of painted photography in the courts and streets of India. He brings the story right through to the present, for this hybrid art form is far from dead in modern India, only under-appreciated.

A second essay by Pramod Kumar K.G. looks at how these painted photographs reflect changing fashions during the Raj. It is a nice piece of photographic detective work.

The photographs themselves are stunningly printed. They consistently reveal how colored Indian photographs are as beautiful as Japanese works of the same period (Japanese colorized photography, primarily made for the domestic market, is far better known and relatively speaking, more common). In India, as in Japan, painted photography followed in the wake of deep visual representational traditions (miniature painting and woodblock printing for example). The new medium of photography was quickly absorbed into existing image production forms and mechanisms.

Thanks to the Alkazi Collection, these Indian gems are finally seeing the wider light of day and recovering the broader story of Raj photography – one in which the colonial producer and subject was more incidental than instrumental.

Some of the finest exemplars in this volume are not necessarily those with the most brilliant colors, but those with the more subtle use of a few shades or well-woven brushstrokes. They preserve the photographic reality while adding something imaginary to it. The result in each case is a uniquely flavored piece of art.