Albert Thomas Watson Penn: Toda-Woman, 1870-80, Albumen Print © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum
Kunstbibliothek Sammlung Fotografie - Museum für Fotografie Kulturforum Potsdamer Platz Matthäikirchplatz 6, 10785 Berlin Allemagne
One of the most comprehensive and significant collections of portrait photography from India is on exhibit for the first time. The collection of the Ethnological Museum was originally thought to be lost during World War II, only returning to Berlin beginning in the 1990s. Albert Thomas Watson Penn, Bourne & Shepherd, John Burke, Francis Frith, Westfield & Co, Edward Taurines, A.W.A. Platé & Co, Shepherd & Robertson, Samuel Bourne, W.L.H. Skeen & Co present here their pictures.
Now, around 300 photographs from the second half of the nineteenth century offer a comprehensive overview of portrait photography from the Indian subcontinent. In addition to pictures by renowned photographers and studios such as Samuel Bourne, Shepherd & Robertson, A.T.W. Penn, and John Burke, works by lesser known artists are also on display. Popular and unexpectedly diverse ethnographic photography of the time stands in contrast to stylised street shots of artisans, as well as portraits of nobility, including Islamic princes and princesses, Maharajas, and clan leaders, taken in their own palaces or in artfully set studio scenes.
Photographer unknown: Jewish family from Cochin, Malabar, ca. 1880, Albumen Print © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum
A.W.A. Platé & Co: Shakuntala actor, ca. 1900, Albumen Print © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum
One unifying aspect of many early portraits is a particularly European view - "The Colonial Eye". In the second half of the nineteenth century, in the name of science and colonialism, the land and its inhabitants were to be apprehended through observation and cataloguing, analysation and measurement. The fascination with India was especially evoked by the strange-looking indigenous peoples and the caste-system, as well as the splendour of the Indian nobility and the austere life of ascetics.
Bourne & Shepherd: Shah Jahan, Begum of Bhopal, 1877, Albumen Print © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum