'Photos of the Gods' : The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India

Mass-produced images have long been produced and used in India by religious and nationalist movements – the emergence of Indian-run chromolithograph presses in the late 1870s initiated a vast outpouring that have come to dominate many of India’s public and domestic spaces.Drawing on years of archival research, interviews with artists and publishers, and the ethnographic study of their rural consumers, Christopher Pinney traces the intimate connections between the production and consumption of these images and the struggle against colonial rule. The detailed output of individual presses and artists is set against the intensification of the nationalist struggle, the constraints imposed by colonial state censorship, and fifty years of Indian independence. The reader is introduced to artists who trained within colonial art schools, others whose skills reflect their membership of traditional painting castes, and yet others who are self-taught former sign painters.Photos of the Gods is the first comprehensive history of India’s popular visual culture. Combining anthropology, political and cultural history, and the study of aesthetic systems, and using many intriguing and unfamiliar images, the book shows that the current predicament of India cannot be understood without taking into account this complex, fascinating, and until now virtually unseen, visual history. (20050401) Mass-produced images have long been produced and used in India by religious and nationalist movements – the emergence of Indian-run chromolithograph presses in the late 1870s initiated a vast outpouring that have come to dominate many of India's public and domestic spaces. Drawing on years of archival research, interviews with artists and publishers, and the ethnographic study of their rural consumers, Christopher Pinney traces the intimate connections between the production and consumption of these images and the struggle against colonial rule. The detailed output of individual presses and artists is set against the intensification of the nationalist struggle, the constraints imposed by colonial state censorship, and fifty years of Indian independence. The reader is introduced to artists who trained within colonial art schools, others whose skills reflect their membership of traditional painting castes, and yet others who are self-taught former sign painters. Photos of the Gods is the first comprehensive history of India's popular visual culture. Combining anthropology, political and cultural history, and the study of aesthetic systems, and using many intriguing and unfamiliar images, the book shows that the current predicament of India cannot be understood without taking into account this complex, fascinating, and until now virtually unseen, visual history. Photography Imprint 6 Contents 7 Introduction: The Possibility of a Visual History 9 1 Indian Images under the Shadow of Colonialism 15 2 Staging Hinduism: Lithographs and Popular Theatre in Calcutta, 1870-1885 27 3 Peshwas, Parrots and Bombs: Lithographs and Politics in Western India, 1870- 1885 47 4 Lithographs and the Camera in Bombay and Delhi, 1890-1925 61 5 Pastoral Realism: The Nathdvara Devotional Aesthetic, 1925-1935 81 6 The Politics of Popular Images: from Cow Protection to M. K. Gandhi, 1890-1950 107 7 Half-Seen in Advance: Picture Production in Independent India, 1950-2000 147 8 What Pictures Want Now: Rural Consumers of Images, 1980-2000 183 Epilogue: The Recursive Archive 203 References 213 Select Bibliography 225 Acknowledgements 228 List of Illustrations 230 Index 233 Drawing on years of archival research, interviews with artists and publishers, and the ethnographic study of their rural consumers, Christopher Pinney traces the intimate connections between the production and consumption of mass-produced images in India and the struggle against colonial rule Chris Pinney demonstrates how printed images were pivotal to India's struggle for national and religious independence. He also provides a history of printing in India.