The Artful Pose

Photography arrived in the harbour city of Mumbai (erstwhile Bombay) through trade, and the zeal of European explorers and government officials as early as 1840. With the establishment of India's first Photographic Society here in 1854, the medium was used for documentation and even taught as an art-practice in institutions like the Elphinstone College. Mumbai would now become one of the largest centres of photography's patronage and dispersal in India between the mid-19th and early 20th Century, starting with practitioners like the medical doctor, Dr. Narayan Daji (c.1828-75), brother to the acclaimed Indologist, Dr. Bhau Daji. Drawn from the Alkazi Collection of Photography, the exhibition explores the arrival and dissemination of studio photography in Mumbai, through both indigenous and European practitioners. A keen recording of native castes and tribes by officials, in time, gradually expands to the experimentation with portraiture, performance and popular art in numerous photo studios such as S. Hormusjee, Shapoor N. Bhewar, Bombay Photo Company and EOS Photographic Co. among others. By the late 19th Century, professionals and independent firms, such as Bourne & Shepherd and Lala Deen Dayal and Sons, would enlarge the ambit of photography's influence as a widespread democratic medium, with enduring images of families, official and personal leather-bound souvenir albums, carte-de-visite portraits and even the city, exposed as a rising industrial metropolis. Remnants of these past studio spaces and practices still exist today, bearing insights into the role of conventional art-practices on popular culture. The final section of the exhibition presents rare, original photographs from the early 20th Century, including surviving studios such as the Indian Art Studio, Vanguard and Hamilton Studio. These photographs highlight a bygone era of image making in the wake of a digital age.