BENGALURU: Bengaluru’s charm lies in its layered history, where the modern tech metropolis coexists with its storied past. At the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), a unique exhibition titled From Bangalore, with Love offers a glimpse into this past through an extraordinary collection of postcards.
Curated by photographer Clare Arni, Bengaluru-born artist Archana Hande, and art historian Suresh Jayaram, the exhibition transports visitors to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time when the city was a burgeoning blend of British Cantonment and traditional pete (market) areas.
The postcards, dating from 1890 to 1910, were originally part of a collection amassed by Arni’s father, Martin Henry, who was the director of the textile company Madura Coats. “My father only collected postcards from that period,” Arni shares, “Possibly because it was shortly after postcards were introduced to India because his collection stopped around 1910.”
When Henry’s collection was willed to Arni, she wanted to ensure it didn’t languish unseen in boxes. “It’s such an incredible archive, and I wanted to share it with a larger audience,” she says. Over the years, historians and researchers have accessed the collection, including Jayaram, who encountered it while writing his book Bangalore’s Lalbagh: A Chronicle of the Garden and the City.
Their shared admiration for the archive sparked the idea for this exhibition. “We love the idea of archives so it became really easy to collaborate and bring this together. After discussing the categories and looking at all the postcards, it became easy to choose,” says Hande, adding, “All of the postcards are my favourites. It is a city archive which tells you the story of the past which has evolved from the Garden City to the IT City.”
The exhibition features 50 postcards selected from the 250 images of Bengaluru in Arni’s collection. The curation, however, was anything but arbitrary. “We noticed the postcards primarily depicted a central route through Bengaluru, covering areas like Cubbon Park, MG Road, and Commercial Street,” Arni explains. This insight inspired the curators to organise the exhibition as a visual journey through the city, illustrating both its architectural and social history.
While Henry had categorised the postcards into places and people, Arni made a deliberate choice to merge these categories. “I didn’t want it to be purely architectural,” she says. “I included images of the people of Bengaluru as well, giving the exhibition a more holistic representation of the city’s past.” Given the small size of the postcards, another thoughtful curatorial decision was to enlarge the images significantly. “We wanted visitors to appreciate the intricate details that would otherwise require a magnifying glass,” Arni adds. The result is a display that brings the textures and nuances of a bygone era into sharp focus.
(The exhibition is on display till December 15 at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Vasanth Nagar)