As gateways of memories flood the conscious with fragments of a blurry past, photos make the entire picture clear. If history has a way of remembering people, it also has a reputation of neglecting some.
At times, photos are clicked unknowing of what the future holds for them. From casual visuals they become vantage points in understanding the context of a given period.
We knew nothing about Dev Shumsher Rana, Nepal’s former Prime Minister, who earned himself the reputation of being the most liberal PM despite serving the country for just 114 days. But when we came out of a recent exhibition that displayed photos from the time he was in exile in India, we understood exactly how important a visual resource old photos are.
It is the Bhuvan Kumari Devi Archive that has lent its photos to Nirvasanama: Portraits of a Life in Exile Through Changing Viewfinders. Being displayed at the Visual Arts Gallery, the exhibition also presents vintage cameras by The Museo Camera. “The show forges a lens into a time in history filled with glamour and intrigue. Through a close visual anthropological study, it hopes to recreate complexities of that time, spin narratives about costume, jewellery and entertainment customs, and bring to life these fascinating people, with a retelling of anecdotes and idiosyncrasies,” says Aditya Arya of India Photo Archive Foundation and The Museo Camera, who is curating the display with Isha Singh Sahney.
The story of how these photos that were passed down through Sahney’s great grand-mother, the daughter of the Rana, came to be displayed is as interesting as the photos themselves. Buried in a solitary attic with several other miscellaneous objects keeping them company, hundreds of these photos were destined to be burnt. “The arsonists were my grandmother and mother. In one attempt amongst hundreds, to clean my grandparent’s 150 year old house, these old photos from the end of the 19th century were almost destroyed. Fortunately, they were saved to be displayed now,” says Sawhney.
During another attempt to clean the attic in 2012, the photos resurfaced, along with letters, account registers, travel records and dowry lists. So, in 2014, with the help of archivist Aditya Arya, these photos were archived and digitized.
Besides the royal period, the images show the trajectory that photography as an art form has taken over the decades. “Since the inception and announcement of Louis Daguerre’s first practical photographic process release in Paris in August 19, 1839, the story of changing viewfinders and technologies to capture images has been in evolving,” says Arya.
There are photos in the exhibition that sharply capture emotions of longingness, of love and of desire. There are also those that were hand coloured to heighten their realism.
The exhibit has a larger purpose than just recalling Rana’s time. It also stands for what the future needs—a man who could bring reform at the risk of condemnation. “What’s not to love in his story, especially in today’s world when each of our elected representatives seem to be more terrible than the next. Politics seem to be ruled by conservatives who have no vision for change. Viewing these images could be an eye opener for them and the public that’s being governed by them,” says Sawhney. Till August 24: 10 am to 8 pm, at Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road