Rahaab Allana’s edited volume Unframed on lens-based practices in South Asia comes at a moment of introspection for photography as a practice that has seen several turns in its nearly 200-year-old biography. Professionally too, this is a reflective moment for the editor who in the introduction, ruminates over more than two decades of work produced by the Alkazi Collection of Photography, New Delhi, including exhibitions, conferences, books and other events from within and beyond its own archive.

The process of ‘unframing’ that the volume offers has to do with identifying and unpacking, understanding and critiquing the archival, institutional, theoretical, exhibitionary and artistic frameworks that have defined photography in South Asia. At stake is a redefinition of both, vernacular photography from the non Euro-American world as well as what is understood as South Asian lens based visual culture at large. As Allana says, “This volume presents photography as both an original media that can assume hybrid form, and as a political, historical and social resource that has radically expanded our understanding of artistic and activist engagement in colonial and postcolonial “South Asia”.”

Unframed: Discovering Image Practices in South Asia
Edited by Rahaab Allana
Alkazi Collection of Photography and Harper Design, 2023

The book’s essays appear under five sections, each informing the reader on photography’s origins, operations and impact in the region. They range between explorations of the self and the ‘other’ in the colonial context, the technologies of image production and circuits of representation, contemporary curatorial methodologies and national cultural politics and histories.

Even though the book does not claim to be exhaustive in addressing all photographic history in the region, it is an ambitious work towards a counter discursive space that departs from known theoretical Euro-American models of understanding the camera’s operations. It is hoped that Unframed shall see subsequent volumes that further address the currently overlooked issues of intersectionality, commerce and pedagogy among others, that shape our photography.

Unframed acknowledges the medium specificity of the camera, engaging with technological, aesthetic and institutional dimensions of photography within the larger socio-political terrain that it affects. The essays seek to interrogate how photography has addressed, affirmed and countered global assumptions about South Asia, how these countries are home and nation to diverse ethnic, linguistic and cultural communities, geopolitically bounded, but also challenged. The state is repeatedly evoked for its roles as the archivist, laboratory, pedagogue, patron, critic and censoring agency of photography. Essays on photographies from India’s neighbouring countries – Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar – draw new interconnections through the substratum of digital networks that cut across known realities of animosity and cooperation. These are illustrative of the true democratisation of the camera in a transnational space. As a volume that is chiefly concerned with how power is challenged by the fluidity and disobedience that photography offers, the essays highlight anomalies to expected differences of gender, caste and class in South Asia.

In each of its five sections, Unframed addresses the nature of the viewing gaze and its expectation from photographs to meet the claims of identity and selfhood in personal, local, national and transnational contexts. The category of the ‘vernacular’ interestingly subsumes the plebeian and the princely photographer from South Asia, discussed in the early essays of the book. In his essay, Allana dwells on the exhibition Ephemeral: New Futures for Passing Images for Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa in 2018 mulling over possible iterations of vernacular photography practiced locally, while Mrinalini Venkateswaran examines the nineteenth century archive of Sawai Ram Singh II from Jaipur, the first photographer prince to use the modern camera. Other practices such as the ethnographic works of James Henry Green (1893 – 1975) in Burma resonate with the photographs from Ceylon in the essays by David Odo and Ismeth Raheem respectively. The photographer Lionel Wendt’s (1900-1944) experiments in a modern photographic styles presenting a counter gaze to colonial stereo typification of the ‘native’ in Ceylon.

One is inclined to try and locate Unframed amidst other recently published edited volumes on photography, namely Photography in India: From Archives to Contemporary Practice, edited by Aileen Blaney and Chinar Shah (2020), Photography in India: A Visual History from the 1850s to the Present, by Diva Gujral and Nathaniel Gaskell (2019), and Points of View: Defining Moments of Photography in India, edited by Gayatri Sinha (2021). It shares overlapping concerns with these closely timed volumes, yet its focus on the socio-political flux that complicates South Asia’s political identity sets it apart. The inclusion of essays by Bakirathi Mani on diasporic Indian identity, or Hammad Nasar on the overall status of art practice in Pakistan offer wider contexts to locate photography, without addressing the medium of the camera in particular. Such inclusions allow Unframed to identify the larger frameworks that construct South Asian visuality.

Rahaab Allana.

The title of the volume claims to ‘discover’ new image practices, which it does along with new writing on photography from South Asia, but it posits these amidst established publications that mainly address Indian photography. The inclusion of older, landmark essays that have defined the discipline, say by the authors Christopher Pinney and Sudhir Mahadevan, locate, rather than ‘frame’ or subsume the South Asian photographic context’s dialogue with Euro-American theoretical investigations. What emerges is a possible set of new methodologies for examining photography. Pinney is known for his groundbreaking work on colonial and studio based photography in India in his books Camera Indica: the Social Life of Photographs (1997) and The Coming of Photography in India (2008), while Mahadevan writes on photography’s technological and ontological affiliations with cinema. Gopesa Paquette’s essay explores the possibility of photography’s dialogue with classical aesthetics from within South Asia, ranging from Darshan to Rasa theory, opening new ways of re-looking at our lens based practices. The late Aveek Sen’s lecture from 2010 titled ‘Between Blue Rocks’ addresses the important exhibition Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, held in London and Switzerland. Sen uses the literary as a tool for commenting on the photographic flows across these three countries. From the same exhibition’s catalogue is Geeta Kapur’s insightful commentary on the family as a subject of India’s key modern and contemporary photographers Umrao Singh Sher-Gil, Ketaki Sheth, Pablo Bartholomew and Dayanita Singh. In a sense, Unframed urges the reader to examine the rationale behind the political cartographies that divide South Asia within itself, in fact Saloni Mathur’s essay concludes Partition as a ‘method’ in social research that more broadly embeds photography amidst other visual art practices from the region.

The final essays and interviews of the book analyse photography within larger discourses on institutional, exhibitory and curatorial initiatives in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Pakistan, identifying ventures such as the Triennale and the other international art projects as formative junctures for photography’s public manifestations. Other histories of photography in print evidence the inter-ocularity of visual genres, as seen in the essay by Sabeena Gadihoke on the Illustrated Weekly magazine that ran between the 1930s and 90s, Omar Khan’s essay on photographic postcards and Sukanya Baskar’s re-examination of the global exhibition The Family of Man (1955), chiefly through its catalogue and press archives. Inter-ocularity re-appears as the central theme of an interview between Allana and Ashmina Ranjit, a performance artist from Nepal, her political activism taking form through the convergence of these two media.

Finally, the book’s design is to be appreciated for its attention to detail, the treatment of images that level between colour and black and white, and the non-hardcover, academic format inviting serious engagement instead of the leisurely perusal of a coffee-table publication. In fact, the text is granted a certain ‘visual’ space to foster meandered meaning making, an unusual but effective strategy for a book on photography.

Suryanandini Narain is Assistant Professor of Visual Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Tim Flach, president of the Association of Photographers of Britain, delivers a speech during launching ceremony of “Beauty Across Borders: China-Britain Photography Competition” in London, Britain, July 26, 2023. “Beauty Across Borders: China-Britain Photography Competition” was launched here on Wednesday with an aim to showcase China’s landscapes and the richness of its culture, as well as the dynamic exchanges between China and Britain. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

LONDON, July 26 (Xinhua) — “Beauty Across Borders: China-Britain Photography Competition” was launched here on Wednesday with an aim to showcase China’s landscapes and the richness of its culture, as well as the dynamic exchanges between China and Britain.

Jointly organized by the China National Tourist Office in London, Nouvelles d’Europe Britain Edition, and Shangtufang Image Art Studio, the competition also enjoys support from the Cultural Section of the Chinese Embassy in Britain, Britain’s Royal Photographic Society, Global Photographic Union, Sino European Arts, as well as Beijing-London Short Video Festival.

The competition, open to photography enthusiasts from around the world, is divided into three sections: “Beautiful China,” “Splendid China” and “Impressions of China and Britain.”

It is important to understand the people and the culture of other countries, and “photography is the best way to do that,” said Michael Pritchard, programs director of the Royal Photographic Society.

“At the time we enter AI, we need a world that works together and break down the barriers. A medium like photography, in a sense, is a language that crosses these barriers. You don’t need to translate it into Mandarin or English,” Tim Flach, president of the Association of Photographers of Britain, told Xinhua in an interview after the competition’s launching ceremony.

In his view, competitions like “Beauty Across Borders” offer an opportunity to explore the differences and commonalities between the two cultures.

“In my understanding, the language of photography surpasses words as it unites cultures through a visual conversation of mutual understanding. It serves as the window to different cultures, enabling us to step into another world,” said Li Liyan, minister counsellor for cultural affairs of the Chinese Embassy in Britain.

Works will be submitted until Oct. 31. The panel of judges is made up of professional photographers from both China and Britain, who are going to evaluate artworks’ professionalism and score them based on three criteria: theme relevance, artistic meaning and visual presentation.

In December, three winners for the first prize, nine winners for the second prize, 15 winners for the third prize, as well as 30 winners for the honorable mention will be announced. ■

Michael Pritchard, programs director of the Royal Photographic Society, delivers a speech during launching ceremony of “Beauty Across Borders: China-Britain Photography Competition” in London, Britain, July 26, 2023. “Beauty Across Borders: China-Britain Photography Competition” was launched here on Wednesday with an aim to showcase China’s landscapes and the richness of its culture, as well as the dynamic exchanges between China and Britain. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

Nestled between restaurants on The Strand in Gżira sits a historic photography studio that has been open for almost 90 years. Emmanuel Busuttil opened Emmanuel Studio in 1935, following in the footsteps of his father Carlo, also a photographer.

Adorned with images of cabaret dancers, naval vessels, historic buildings and family members, the small shop breathes history, revealing a rare glimpse into a part of Malta’s history that most have forgotten.

“They used to dance in thea­tres around here,” says Rose Busuttil, Emmanuel’s daughter, pointing to a frame lined with old photographs of cabaret dancers in exotic costumes. “When I was little, we used to try to watch through the door when they were performing… we used to like to see them dancing,” says Rose, now aged 90.

Rose was born in 1932 and grew up in Gżira close to the studio. The family moved to Floriana when she was a young child, but after their house was destroyed during an Axis bombing raid the family briefly relocated to Rabat. “I grew up here and we had very good neighbours at the time. In the summer, everyone would take chairs outside in the evenings and chat,” Rose recalls.

The family moved back to the area shortly after her father opened the studio and Rose now lives close by with her nephew Andrew Azzopardi. They spend most of their time at the studio.

Postcards from Malta

Photos of cabaret dancers adorn the photography studio’s walls.

On one wall are postcards depicting landscapes and buildings from Malta’s past, some of which have not survived the passage of time. Valletta’s opera house, for example, was destroyed when the roof collapsed during a night of heavy bombing during World War 2, but, according to Rose, this didn’t spell the end for opera in Malta.

“They used to stage operas at the Orpheum theatre round the corner… we have photos of famous opera singers and violinists,” says Rose, adding the genre proved to be a thriving business for her father. “My father was a great fan of opera and we used to have a real opera season. Companies used to come for the season, usually from Italy.”

A picture of a donkey dressed as a soldier proved particularly popular with customers, Andrew explains. “He used to sell hundreds. It was very popular, but some people used to find it offensive because it was very eccentric,” says Andrew.

Pointing to a postcard showing Castille lit up by floodlights, Rose explains that the technology was uncommon back then. “Floodlighting was still a novelty in those days. There’s a postcard of a seaplane that crashed too… people were still buying those photos in the 1960s,” she says.

Gżira’s colourful past

Having both grown up in the area, Rose and Andrew hold a wealth of knowledge about Gżira’s history, including some of its less salubrious parts. Gesturing to photographs on the wall, Andrew reveals that there was more to some of the performers than met the eye: “I don’t think all of them were just dancers,” he says with a laugh.

There were so many navy servicemen at Manoel Island, there used to be queues for prostitutes

Rose nods, saying that some of the girls also used to work as “hostesses” at a nearby brothel just before and after World War 2. “There were so many navy servicemen at Manoel Island, there used to be queues for prostitutes,” she says. “There was a place on Sir Charles Cameron Street. At the time we used to play outside but our parents didn’t let us pass through that part of the street,” she recalls.

Andrew was born in 1957, but also remembers the area’s colourful past, which he says extended into the early 1960s. “There was a place nearby that wasn’t just a bar… I still remember the madame, I was around three or four at the time,” he says. “They used to take me inside and give me pineapple drinks and sweets, they used to make a real fuss of me. One of the barmaids even got me a present after she won the lotto,” Andrew says.

Present-day troubles

The sign above the door to Emmanuel Studio suffered damage from construction taking place upstairs.

Despite the studio’s unique heritage, it hasn’t always been treated with respect.

“Unfortunately, some of the things we had were either stolen or destroyed because we don’t always stay out in the front… so people come in here and help themselves,” explains Andrew.

The last item to be stolen was a barometer made by film company Agfa, taken from the shop in broad daylight less than a year ago while Rose and Andrew were at the back. Since then, they have moved some photos to the back of the shop and removed others.

Unfortunately, some of the things we had were either stolen or destroyed

Meanwhile, the owners say some photographs were lost due to water damage originating from construction works on the floors above, with the sign outside the shop also damaged. “You can see it’s a bit scruffy outside, but it wasn’t like that originally,” Andrew says.

With its photography days behind it, the shop now sells film, SD cards and printing services, mostly to visitors to the country. “Sometimes they come just to look at the shop. They’re tourists and mostly young, but we do have some regular customers… it’s the only old shop that remains,” she says. “There’s one girl who travels from St Paul’s Bay to come here, and she even brought a friend just to show her the shop,” Rose says with a smile.

Despite the renewed interest, these may be the final years for Emmanuel Studio, as its lease expires in 2028, almost a century after it first opened. When it does eventually close, Gżira will have lost a landmark – not simply a shop, but also a time capsule of the area’s rich cultural heritage.

Until then, Rose and Andrew are committed to maintaining its remarkable legacy.

Exploring New York City style and a society in flux

“I wanted to show how New York City looked to me at that time,” Joel Meyerowitz says of the street photographs he took from the 1960s to the ’80s. “The activities, the clothing people wore, the quality of the buildings, even the light on the street.” These reflections, recorded over 18 months’ worth of interviews with historian Lorenzo Braca, are now being published alongside more than 100 classic and unseen photographs in the photographer’s first biography, The Pleasure of Seeing.

The book spans Meyerowitz’s formative encounters with Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander; his observations on how fashion, gesture and architecture have shifted over the years; and what these changes revealed to him about culture in the United States. The question that fired him, he says, was, “How can we deal with the absurdity of what we were seeing in America, back then, and with the transformation of the social system that we were living through? How does this play out on the streets?” From observing life – from the “very expensive business suits” to the “messengers” – he built a picture of the US that offers an answer.
The Pleasure of Seeing: Conversations with Joel Meyerowitz on 60 Years in the Life of Photography is published by Damiani at £55

The many faces of a city of possibilities

Photographer Luc Kordas grew up in Wrocław, Poland, and moved between London, Madrid, Barcelona and San Francisco before arriving in New York in 2014, aged 30. He quickly began exploring the lesser-known boroughs with his camera, photographing life on the street. These snapshots of the city’s multiplicities make up his first monograph, New York Unseen. In one image, a girl rides the subway, eyes closed and hands resting on the window, as if making a wish; in another, protestors raise placards and megaphones at a Black Lives Matter demonstration.

Elsewhere, salsa dancers whirl and spin along the boardwalk of Coney Island in a dance class. Kordas borrows words from Joan Didion’s 1967 essay “Goodbye to All That” to describe his feelings towards the city: “I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.”
New York Unseen by Luc Kordas is published by teNeues at £19.95

Basquiat and Warhol’s touching friendship

In December 1984, photographer Jeannette Montgomery Barron travelled to Jean-Michel Basquiat’s studio on Great Jones Street, carrying only her camera, a light and three rolls of film. Her set-up was simple: a plain wall, some of his paintings, the shadow cast by a birdcage he kept in his studio. One sitting led to another, this time at The Factory with his friend Andy Warhol. Both sittings, from 1984 and 1985, are brought together for the first time in a new book, alongside an essay by Italian artist Francesco Clemente. In contrast to the myriad posed and highly stylised photographs of the pair, Barron’s naturalistic images capture a more subtle dynamic: a shared sense of melancholy, a gentle and tender friendship. The secret to her success, writes Clemente, was that she didn’t treat her subjects like celebrity artists but rather “as poets, emerging timidly from darkness to the realness and fragility of body and soul”.
JMB by Jeannette Montgomery Barron and Francesco Clemente is published by NJG at £45

Building a kernel photo library with new and updated images from each of the six classes of U.S. wheat requires the single steady hand of a skilled photographer.

And hundreds of hands of support from everyone else.

Photos in the wheat kernel photo library project, which U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) began planning earlier this year, include magnified up-close shots of individual kernels, as well as cross-cut shots that show an internal view of the kernel. There are photos of small piles of the grains that depict uniformity and color.

The library is still “under construction,” but once it is complete, photos will be used for a variety of projects. Having access to clear and accurate kernel images allows USW to educate and inform both internal and external audiences.

The wheat kernel photo library project took a major leap forward in June. Over two days, a Middle photographer captured images of a dozen different varieties of U.S. wheat – the six classes and several subclasses – from fields across the country.

Therein lies the referenced “hundreds of hands of support” – wheat kernels photographed for the USW project were sent to the NDSU campus in boxes and buckets from Idaho, Kansas, Maryland, Ohio, Oregon, Texas and North Dakota.