Modern India is an exhibition which examines questions of history, culture, art and social reality in India from the end of the eighteenth century to the present day. " This exhibition in Valencia, Spain ran from Dec 2008 through Feb. 2009 and includes a substantial catalog with numerous images available online.

The colorful 68 page Spanish catalog covers various fine arts of India during the Raj, including photography. There are a number of fine paintings and miniatures from collections all over the world. There are a number of photographs by masters like Fiebig and Bourne, Portman and Beato. A number of panoramas are included.

The photographic captions are fortunately in English, but the primary text is in Spanish. Nonetheless, well worth opening the PDF to see so many photographs nicely reproduced. A number of modern versions of old photographs, comparing Indian Indians and American Indian poses for example, are also included.

The photograph above shows a giant camera at the Survey of India offices in 1911.

The self-description continues:

"Divided into an introduction and five chronological historical areas, the exhibition is a journey through India's colonial past and globalized present, based on texts, documents, archive materials and artistic proposals. Modern India tells the story of a modernity rooted in a solid, rich artistic tradition which goes back to the cultural exchange between Europeans and Indian society and their mutual influence. The main theory behind this exhibition is that modernism was not only a Western art practice, but an international one, and we can therefore talk about several simultaneous modernisms, which together contribute to and build a global modernism. The accompanying exhibition catalogue intends to be a space for reflection on the cultural processes and practices of the Indian imaginary in the symbolic space that is the West."