Pakistan

Pioneers of Indian Photography

Village of India
A detailed essay by one of the most important scholars of British Indian photography and longtime curator of the photograph collection at the India Office Library, John Falconer. The essay very nicely summarizes early photographic activity in India, and offers footnotes and references to make its case.Read more

From Kashmir to Kabul

From Kashmir to Kabul: The Photographs of Burke and Baker, 1860-1900
Author: Omar A. Khan
Publisher: Prestel Publishing (2002)
Binding: Hardcover, 208 pages

As international events draw attention to the people and landscapes of Afghanistan and Pakistan, images of these war-torn countries are becoming increasingly familiar. The harsh beauty of the region has been luring photographers since the Victorian age, the most famous of whom were William Baker and John Burke. Their photographs of the "Great Game" - a phrase coined by Rudyard Kipling for the power struggles of British and Russian imperialism - were an inspiration to the writer, and remain some of the most poignant images of the British Empire.Read more

Dead Pathans

Spiti
Sometimes old postcards shock you with their relevancy. In this case, 100 year old images from the tribal areas of Pakistan bear a creepy similarity to today's imagery.

Two examples suffice.Read more

Eid Mubarak: Cross-cultural Image Exchange in Muslim South Asia

EID CARD CIRCA 1920
by Yousaf Saeed

"In the 1970s and 1980s, a few days before the festivals of Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Zuha, I regularly visited the Urdu bazaar opposite Jama Masjid in old Delhi with my parents to buy visually attractive Eid cards, then wrote short messages of greetings and salutations for friends and relatives residing in other towns, and dropped these into the nearby post box.Read more

Ava Gardner in Lahore a Half-Century Ago

Ava Gardener in Lahore

If a photograph can evoke a different era in Pakistan, then it might be this one of Ava Gardner in Lahore during the filming of Bhowani Junction (), based on the novel by John Masters.Read more

Granta Pakistan

granta Pakistan
It was so nice to see a Pakistan issue of the literary magazine Granta 112: Pakistan (Granta: The Magazine of New Writing) , but the result disappoints. With a few exceptions, this collection seems put together hurriedly, with little search for those compelling pieces of fiction that might illuminate the slow-motion collapse of this sixty year old nation.Read more

Tuck's Waziristan 1905

Waziri Girl
As various armies from near and far congregate in Waziristan and Khyber Agency, it is a good time to recall a postcard series made during the height of the British Empire. Then "campaigns" on the Frontier took place every few years. This 6 card series (#9310) by Raphael Tuck & Sons of London, was published around 1905, soon after the biggest uprising against the British had taken place in 1897-98.Read more

Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies

Magic Lantern Bazaar
An exciting new journal that covers early South Asian film and other visual media like bazaar lantern shows was recently launched. Contributors include major academics like Christopher Pinney. Articles cover everything from Telugu to Pakistani and Bangladeshi cinema.Read more

Picturing Mountains As Hills: Hill Station Postcards and the Tales They Tell

Grand Hotel, Simla
by Shashwati Talukdar

"The colonial postcard [was] particularly well suited to encode the project of empire," writes the author, who then goes on to explore how hillstation postcards were used to tame the Himalayas.

Another interesting, nicely illustrated by means of a separate slide show, essay from Tasveerghar, the Delhi publishing research archive.

Quetta in Old Postcards

Sandeman Hall
by Liz Mckendrick

The frontier town of Quetta lies only miles from both the Afghan and Iranian borders with the Bolan Pass running straight to Kandahar in one direction and the heartland of Pakistan in the other; it is tucked in the south west corner of Pakistan giving it a strategic military position.Read more

Syndicate content