SHORT FEATURE ON TWO PRIOR EXHIBITIONS
ELLIPSIS: THE SAWAI RAM SINGH II ARCHIVE
15 February – 30 April 2019
Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur
A REFLECTIVE OEUVRE: THE PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHS OF MAHARAJA SAWAI RAM SINGH II
19 August – 18 September 2019
Art Heritage, New Delhi
Curated by: Giles Tillotson, Mrinalini Venkateswaran and Rahaab Allana
These exhibitions last year presented rare reproductions from the archive of the City Palace Museum, Jaipur, revealing Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II’s early engagement with photography as India’s first known photographer-king. The pioneering images of Sawai Ram Singh II – a repertoire of portraiture and urban documentation from the 1860s and ‘70s – reveal a self-reflective persona, offering visual citations from the practitioner’s oeuvre, thereby generating a visual autobiography. These works were displayed along with the re-composed ‘vintage’ works of Nandan Ghiya (a Jaipur-based contemporary artist) represented by Exhibit 320 (New Delhi).
Feature composed by Alkazi Foundation with excerpts from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8foHQBrmCQ&t=11s