MGA | Visions of India: from the colonial to the contemporary

Monash Gallery of Art

17 December 2021 to 20 March 2022

Since its invention in Europe in the 1840s, the genre of photography has played an integral role in the course of Indian art history. Although it is often quoted that India is the most photographed country in the world, the history of its representation is more complicated, and more political than initially meets the eye.

Visions of India: from the colonial to the contemporary is the first major survey of Indian photography in Australia, and all artworks showcased are from the collection of Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), Bengaluru, one of the most celebrated collections of photographs relating to India in the world.

Curated by Nathaniel Gaskell, the exhibition begins its journey in 1860, displaying a range of works by pioneering studio photographers, such as Samuel Bourne and Lala Deen Dayal, before continuing right through to the contemporary photographic practices of artists such as Pushpamala N, Karen Knorr and Michael Bühler-Rose.

Artists: Darogah Abbas Ali, Indu Antony, Felice Beato, Mitter Bedi, Jyoti Bhatt, Bourne & Shepherd, Samuel Bourne, Michael Bühler-Rose, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Chunni Lall & Co., Lala Deen Dayal, Francis Frith & Co., Gauri Gill, Khubiram Gopilal, Hamilton Studios Ltd, Johnston and Hoffmann, Willoughby Wallace Hooper, William Johnson, John William Kaye and John Forbes Watson, Karen Knorr, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, Steve McCurry, Saché & Murray Studios, Pushpamala N with Clare Arni, Nicolas & Company (attributed), Norman Parkinson, Anoli Perera, Suresh Punjabi, Marc Riboud, John Edward Saché, Charles Scott (attributed), Sawai Ram Singh II, Maharaja of Jaipur, Edward Taurines (attributed), Waswo X Waswo, Wiele and Klein Studio, Wilson Studios Bombay

Curator: Nathaniel Gaskell is a curator, writer and director of the MAP Academy, Bengaluru, and the former director of the Tasveer Gallery, India. He is the author of Photography in India: A visual history from the 1850s to the present (Prestel, 2018), and editor of several other books on photography in Asia, including William Dalrymple’s The historian’s eye (HarperCollins India), Derry Moore’s In the shadow of the Raj (Prestel, 2017) and Karan Kapoor’s Time & tide and Hikari: contemporary photography from Japan.

For more information please visit the MGA Website HERE