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Photography in India A Visual History from the 1850s to the Present-Prestel by Nathaniel Gaskell PDF



A stunning pictorial survey of photography in India, from its earliest use as an instrument of colonial control and administration to its development into a national form of artistic expression and social documentation.



"It is this ability of the book to provide a kaleidoscopic insight into photography in and of India that sets it apart from earlier works on the discipline. While most of the older scholarship focuses on 19th century photography in India, the 304-page book's essays traverse right up to the 21st century in a tight visual narrative..." (Scroll.in)



"From the 1840s to today, Photography in India explores 150 years of photography and cultural history. Spanning genres such as street photography, documentary, photojournalism and ethnography, it features over 100 practitioners from India and around the world..." (Aesthetica)



"An old Indian poet once said to me, 'India is mad with all the madness of reality. Splendor and terror, violence and mystery coexist here - two faces of one eternal Kali'. To have had an Indian childhood is to have been initiated very young into horror as well as miracle. I had only to look out of the car window to see the fingerless lepers in the streets, the poor huddled under patchwork blankets in midwinter, the old women hardly able to walk dragging pails of water or working on building sites in blinding sun. My grandmother’s shaved and colonnaded garden was full of snakes that the snake man caught and threw, hissing, into a gunnysack; a Russell’s viper I saw one morning glittering at the bottom of the garden well killed two cows and a child. One night when my parents had gone to a party I lay in their bed and listened to a howling that sounded like the misery of all India rising to the night sky. Next morning I saw a thin, brown rabid dog being strapped to the back of a bicycle, its mouth a mop of blood and foam. Its terrible face appeared in my dreams for years..." (Hidden Journey by Andrew Harvey)



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