Early Photography in Asia: India

This book follows the remarkable story of photography in India from the 1850s to today. India has one of the richest and most extensive histories of photography in the world. This book traces that history, covering more than a century of photography trends, and political, artistic, and societal movements. Organized chronologically, it covers colonial and early Indian images from the first artistic photographs and portraiture to photojournalism and foreign reportage. The book also covers social documentary, modernism, contemporary art, and the current art scene. As the country evolved from a colonial territory to an independent state to an economic force in the region, its photography reflected the country's development. Leading Indian photographers are included in this well-researched and engaging book that also highlights lesser-known artists and features examples of street, architecture, and landscape photography. This volume is a fascinating look at how today's leading Indian photographers hark back to the work of their predecessors more than a century ago.

Afterimage of Empire provides a philosophical and historical account of early photography in India that focuses on how aesthetic experiments in colonial photography changed the nature of perception. Considering photographs from the Sepoy Revolt of 1857 along with landscape, portraiture, and famine photography, Zahid R. Chaudhary explores larger issues of truth, memory, and embodiment. Chaudhary scrutinizes the colonial context to understand the production of sense itself, proposing a new theory of interpreting the historical difference of aesthetic forms. In rereading colonial photographic images, he shows how the histories of colonialism became aesthetically, mimetically, and perceptually generative. He suggests that photography arrived in India not only as a technology of the colonial state but also as an instrument that eventually extended and transformed sight for photographers and the body politic, both British and Indian. Ultimately, Afterimage of Empire uncovers what the colonial history of the medium of photography can teach us about the making of the modern perceptual apparatus, the transformation of aesthetic experience, and the linkages between perception and meaning. the colonial history of the medium of photography can teach us about the making of the modern perceptual apparatus, the transformation of aesthetic experience, and the linkages between perception and meaning. the colonial history of the medium of photography can teach us about the making of the modern perceptual apparatus, the transformation of aesthetic experience, and the linkages between perception and meaning. the colonial history of the medium of photography can teach us about the making of the modern perceptual apparatus, the transformation of aesthetic experience, and the linkages between perception and meaning.