Centre for Media Studies

School of Social Sciences, JNU

Visual Histories: Themes in Photography and Materiality
(Optional Course)
Credits: 04
Course Instructor: Dr. Kimi
Evaluation: One mid-term assignment (30%), presentation (20%), Photography workshop (10%) and end-term
examination (40%)

Course Description:

Various visual technologies-painting, photography, cartography, map, cinema - have been central to
the constitution and experience of modernity. Photography, as one of the technologies of
representation, came to India during the later phase of colonialism; it invariably depicts many
complex layers of Indian society. Through a close reading of some key writings on the history,
practice and theory of photography, this course will examine the ways in which ideas of culture and
modernity have emerged and how photograph visualizes the idea of modern self. More specifically,
we will look at the ways in which the subject of modernity is constituted through technology and
how ideas of tradition, identity and authenticity are reconfigured. The course sets out as a threshold
to enter the burgeoning field of study of visual culture and social life of images.

The main objectives of this course are; to understand the history and political economy of
photography; to explore the technique of representations and the facets of modernity in the late 19 th
and early 20th century; to examine the photographically mediated visual culture, in conjunction with
the other forms of representational practices which are involved in literature, art and architecture; to
situate the question of realism and its early forms. The course will look at the contemporary
‘photographic movements’ which highlights the visual elaboration of ethical, moral and human right
issues. Overall, the course will enable students to critically engage with visual images, in order to
explore how they are imbued with forms of power relationship, subjectivities, and resistance. It
would help students to appreciate the multiple layers and social signifiers of images, by deploying
various analytical tools such as historical, semiotic and discourse analysis.

The course will have taught sessions and a self study paper, students’ presentations and photography
workshop

Unit 1: Introduction: History, Photography, Materiality

This introductory section of the course will explore the relation between photography and
materiality within the context of modernity. The section will have both empirical and theoretical
analysis in order to explain the ways in which how visual signifiers indexically illustrate its discursive
context and its different social and cultural dynamisms. The themes include a general history of
photography and the way it connected with imperialism, colonialism and vernacular visions of
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modernity. One of the primary objectives of this section is to analyze how visual language helps us
to understand the social formation of the society and also to explore whether photographic frames
enable us to understand the cultural politics involved in social relation and its imaginary. This section
also provides a basic introduction to a range of methods that can be used to interpret visual texts for
social science research such as visual semiotics, discourse analysis, content and psychoanalysis.

° Gillian Rose and Divya P. Tolia-Kelly, Visuality/materiality: Images, objects and practices
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), Chapter 1-2.

° Mark Poster, “Visual Studies as Media Studies”, Journal of Visual Studies. Vol 1(1) 2002, pp-
67-71

° Elisabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, “Introduction: Photographs as Objects” in Photographs

Objects Histories: On Materiality of Images. London: Routledge, 2004

° Timothy Mitchell, “The Stage of Modernity”, Timothy Mitchell, (ed.) Questions of Modernity
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 1-34.
° Jonathan Crary, “Modernity and the Problem of the Observer”, in Techniques of the observer : on
Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990)pp. 1-24
° Raymond Williams, “The Technology and the Society” in Askew, Kelly Michelle and
Richard Wilk R (eds.,)The anthropology of Media : A Reader (Massachusetts: Blackwell
Publishing, 2002) 27-40
° John Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (London:
Macmillan Education, 1988.)Chapter 2

° Thomas, G. History of Photography India 1840-1980 (Andhra Pradesh State Akademi of

Photography, 1981) first Chapter
° Kracauer, Siegfried, “Photography”. Critical Inquiry, 1(3) 1993: 421-436.

° Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Trans. Richard Howard (New York:
The Noonday Press,1988) pp-1-45

Unit 2: Language and Visual literacy: Interface between Verbal and Visual

The intellectual and academic discourse has addressed the new visual experience of modernity—
inaugurated by and through photography—as a shift from ‘linguistic turn’ to the ‘pictorial turn’.
Academic and intellectual scholarships refer to this shift or the prominence of the picture in
everyday life as ‘language of art’, ‘visuality’, ‘scopic regimes’, ocular-centrism’, ‘visibility and power’
and ‘visual turn’, and the like. This section of the course will theorize the transition and interface
between verbal and visual discourse while giving focus on contemporary debate on visual/verbal
dichotomy.

° Mitchell, W.J.T. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation.

(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997), chapter 1.

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 ° Vilém Flusser, Towards a philosophy of Photography, introduction
° Jacques Derrida, Copy, archive Signature: A conversation on Photography (excerpts )
° Bazin, Andre,. ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image” in What is Cinema? Vol. I. Trans.
Hugh Gray( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) 9-16
° Sontag, Susan.. “ In Plato’s Cave” In On Photography (New York: Penguin, 1973)pp. 3-26
° Victor Burgin, “Seeing Sense” in Howard Davis and Paul Walton (eds,) Language, Image and
Media (Blackwell:1993)pp.
° Berger, J. Ways of Seeing. (London: British Broadcasting Association and
Penguin. 1972, chapter 1)

Unit 3: Modernity and Technology: Disciplining the Subjects

This section of the course will have its focus on materiality or discursive context of photography, as
the way it was used within the domains of imperialism, colonialism, and the nationalist discourses.
What are the ways in which photographic realism correspond with various ideologies and politics of
the time? What are the ways in which photography become a tool to represent docile bodies; a tool
for categorization of people and natural resources; its commoditization aspects; etc are some of the
themes for the discussion. Apart from the ideological insights, this section also engages with the
question of how photography invented new visual idioms within the political economy of
colonialism as well as within the context of colonial modernity.

° Tagg. John.. “Evidence, Truth and Order: the photographic records and the Growth of the
State, in The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (London: Macmillan
Education,1988) ( Chapter 2)
° Edelman, Bernard, Ownership of the Image: Elements for a Marxist Theory of Law. Trans, Elizabeth
Kingdom. (London: Routledge & Kergan Paul,1979)chapter 1
° Michel Foucault, “Panopticism” Visual culture : the reader Evans, Jessica; Hall, Stuart:
(London: Sage Publications, 1999) 61-71

Unit 4: Fixing the Stereotype: Race, Caste, Tribe and Gender

The late 19th and early 20th century photographs were instrumental in creating a discourse of
ethnography of different castes and tribes, leading in turn to the creation of cultural
tropes/stereotypes. The colonial and postcolonial photography followed these different conventions
of visualization in representing different social groups and subjectivities. Camera provided new
visual vocabulary for the cultural types, which in turn become a recurring ethnographic sign for the
other visual media, such as popular cinema, in order to familiarize and reproduce a visual language
for stereotype representation of race, caste, and gender. This section will further discuss these
aspects of socially and culturally validated visual scheme invented by photography.

° Poole, Deborah Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World
(Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997), chapter 1
° Edwards, Elisabeth. “Photographic “Types”: The Pursuit of Method”. In Visual Anthropology
1990. 3 (2-3): 235-258

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 ° Elisabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, “Mixed box : the cultural Biography of a box of
‘ethnographic’ photographs” in Photographs Objects Histories: On Materiality of Images. London:
Routledge, 2004

° Nicholas Dirks, Caste of Mind, details will be added later

° Pinney Christopher, “Stern Fidelity and penetrating Certainty” In Camera Indica: the Social
Life of Indian Photographs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997)pp.17-71

° ------“Classification and Fantasy in the Photographic Construction of Caste and Tribe,”

Visual Anthropology, 3(2-3), pp. 259-288
° David MacDougall, “The Visual in Anthropology” in The Corporeal Image Film, Ethnography,
and the Senses. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006

° Faris, James C. “The Gaze of Western Humanism.” In The Anthropology of Media: A Reader,
ed. Kelly askew and Richard R. Wilk, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002)pp. 77-91

Unit 5: Photography and Commodity Culture

This section of the course will further describe the commercial and commodity aspects of
photographic medium; how photography become an instrument to reproduce illusion, desire and
hallucination; in what way can one decode the visual language of social fantasy and mimicry which
inscribed on the photographic frames: what are the ways in which the commercial photography
communicate a universal language of commodity culture; and the signified sign-value of the objects,
gestures and their sensorial affect are some issues which this section intends to discuss.

° Christian Metz. “Photography and Fetish”, in Liz Wells.edt,. The Photography Reader
(London: Rutledge, 2004)pp. 138-147

° W.J.T Mitchell, “Benjamin and the Political Economy of the Photograph, in in Liz
Wells.edt,. The Photography Reader ( London: Rutledge, 2004), pp. 53-58

° Ramamurthy, Anandi “Constructions of Illusions: Photography and Commodity Culture.” In

Photography: Critical Introduction, ed. Liz Wells, (London: Routledge. 1997)pp. 151-198
° R. Srivatsan, Conditions of Visibility: Writings on Photography in Contemporary India
(chapter1)

Unit 6: Studio and Family Photographs: An Experiment with Modern?

This section of the course will look at various photographic practices in India to examine how visual
mediation of the social or social mediation of the visual was practiced in India. Here photographic
representation of the social life is not only contextualized within the context of Indian modernity
and nationalism but also examine its relation with other forms of representation such as sketches,
painting and lithograph, etc. This section consists of sessions which deal with the questions such as
how early photographic practices in India articulate the ideals of material/public and spiritual
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domains of the Indian society within the context of Indian modernity. How photographic space
provides a platform for native to articulate their idea of modern, what are the props used to
enunciate their refashioned identity, what are the social signifiers and connoted meaning associated
with the objects, things, pose, look and gesture of the photographed subjects and how does it
delineate the social and hierarchical positions of communities and their cultural capitals, are some of
the question to be engaged.

° Geeta Kapur, “When Was Modernism in Indian Art”, Journal of Arts & Ideas, (27-28)
° Arunima . G, “Face value: Ravi Varma's Portraiture and the Project of Colonial Modernity”,
The Indian Economic and Social History Review, XL:1, (January - March 2003)
° Tapati. Guha-Takurta, “The Contest over Tradition and Nationalism: Differing Aesthetic
Formulations for 'Indian' Painting”, in The Making of a New "Indian" Art : Artists, Aesthetics,
and Nationalism in Bengal, c. 1850-1920(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992),
pp.185-228
° Gutman, Judith. Mara.. “ Painted Photographs”. In Through Indian Eyes: 19th and early 20th
century Photography from India (New York: Oxford University Press,1982)pp. 103-132

° Arjun Appadurai.. “The Colonial Backdrop” Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural
Criticism 24(5), 1997, pp.4-7.

° Alec McHoul, “Street and Studio: Popular Commercial Photography in India and
Bangladesh”.http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/issue8/mchoul.html, 2002.
° Malavika Karlekar, “ The Bengali Experience”, in Re-visioning the Past: Early Photography
in Bengal 1875-1915,
° Pinney Christopher, ‘Chambers of Dreams’ , from Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian
Photographs. (London: Reaktion Books, 1997)pp.108-209.

° Partha Chatterjee, ‘Critique of Popular Culture’, Public Culture, Vol.----2008

Unit 7: Recycled Visuals: Iconography, Nation, Religion and the Contemporary Visual
Field

This unit of the course will look at the ways in which the nation is being visualized and what way the
national imaginary is affiliated with certain hegemonic ideas which was part and parcel of the
hierarchical social order of the society. What is the relation between national image-icon and politics
of nationalism as well as how these image-signs are bounded with the ideas of Hindu nationalism
within the colonial and postcolonial context? Further, this section will also examine how
contemporary image making practices and their aesthetic domains are continuing with these socially
and politically coded meanings or religious nationalism.

° Partha Chatterjee, ‘ The Sacred Circulation of National Image’, in Maria Antonella Pelizzari,
edt., Traces of India: Photography, Architecture, and the politics of representation, 1850-1900(Montreal:
Canadian Centre for Architecture and New Heaven: Yale Centre for British Art and
Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing, 2003), pp.278-291

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Unit 8: Visual Turn and Photography: Visual Phenomena of the Digital Media Platforms

This section of the course will consider the aesthetic, ethical, political concern and affective content
of different genres and phenomena of photographs and digital media platforms which are part and
parcel of our everyday conversation and interaction. The unit will delibrate on the concern of
visuality and visibility in the digital media era. Some other concerns of this unit are: To understand
the forms of digital imaging and its social and cultural mediation; to understand how these new
media and digital photographic practices, use of visual phenomena amd documentary photographs
generate ethical, political and human right issues while representing as well as circulating within the
domain of the public.

 Lindgreen Simon (2022) (2nd Edition). Digital Media & Society. Published by SAGE
Publications India Pvt. Ltd. B 1/I 1Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area, Mathura Road, New
Delhi 110044
° Sarah Kember, “ The Shadow of the Object: Photography and Realism, in Liz Wells.edt,.
The Photography Reader ( London: Rutledge, 2004)pp.201-217

° Agamben, G. ‘Marx, or the Universal Exposition’, in Stanzas: The Word and the
Phantasm in Western Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.

° Mirzoeff, N. Watching Babylon: The War in Iraq and Global Visual

Culture ( New York: Routledge, 2006)

° Rancière, J. The Future of the Image. (London: Verso, 2009)

° Rancière, J. The Emancipated Spectator. (London: Verso. 2009 ) chapters one and four
Section 9: Screening and discussion
° Ranjini Majumdar and Shikha Jhingan, The Power of the Image series: Whatever Happened to
the Vamp, 30 mins, 1997
° Kitchen Stories, 95 mins, 2003
° Sabeena Gadihoke, Three Women and a Camera, 56 mins
° Nishta Jain, City of Photos, 60 mins, 2005

Supplementary Readings:
° Pierre Bourdieu, “The Social Definition of Photography”, in Evans, Jessica; Hall, Stuart (eds)
Visual Culture : the Reader (London: Sage Publications, 1999) 162-180
° David MacDougall, “Photo Hierarchicus: Signs and Mirrors in Indian Photography” in The
Corporeal Image Film, Ethnography, and the Senses. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006
° Elspeth H. Brown and Thy Phu. “Introduction” in Elspeth H. Brown and Thy Phu (eds.)
Feeling Photography (London: Duke University Press, 2014) pp 1-25,.
° Joy . L. K Pachuau and Willem Van Schendel, The Camera as Wittness: A scoal History of
Mizoram, Northeast India, Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2015)
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° Janaki Nair, Mysore Modern: Rethinking the Region Under Princely Rule (University of Minnesota
Press , 2011) Introduction and chapter 1