INDIA IN THE UNPUBLISHED GLASS PLATES OF BRITISH RULE

Images of different subjects taken from glass plates, like plates from street photographers, magic lanterns, as well as small-sized stereo plates which could be watched using viewers from early 1900s. They all share the fleeting observation of a slow life flow that surrounds both men and things: portraits of men and women from the upper castes to the lowest ones, merchants, animals, temples, mosques, praying men, cremations. It is the becoming of life and death, a world that looks firm and stable for centuries from outside, but it contains forces that can give birth to strong explosions when evoked, uncontrollable, often violent, which the British colonial dominion had to surrender to in the mid-1900s; they had to grant those populations formal independence, although they were still keeping the privileges and the power of the middle class under control through the bureaucracy. The dominators knew that the dependence of those countries was possible because they did not cancel the concepts of castes and social levels that still today affect the way people are judging it and seeing it as social barriers. A mysterious India, as large as Europe, which keeps inside some germs that come out so quickly and in a contradictory way that show the limits of all the economic theories applied until now to the Sub Continent, established to evoke the possibility of conforming to what Indira Gandhi’s program in the 60s called “Garibi Hatao” (let us turn the misery over…). The Gandhian revolution has allowed to free India from Albion, the green one in the 50s failed because of the resistance of the cornerstones of the capitalist-feudal system that still remains, while the red one is attempting to win through the Maoist-Naxalite rebellion, aiming on the needs of people torn by internal and external industrial system based on money and profit of the corporations. The photos about India, printed on either cotton paper with carbon ink or baryta paper, show a country which it still far from certain drives that will follow later, with the viewer being able to have a more complete idea about how difficult and slow the progress of a billion of people can be. Both our ideas and these images help us to understand the difficulties of those populations willing to break free from the need.

Bourning Ghat. Benares, India 1890 caA Bengalee Lady. India 1900 caThe Monkey's Temple. Varanasi, India 1890 ca. AlbumenPortrait of dancing girl. India 1900 caVery rare picture showing Adhai Din Mosque. Ajmer, India 1910 caToy train. Darjeeling, India. Albumen. Possibly BourneThe Maharaja and his family. Bourne and Sheapherds 1860 caDurga Temple. Benares, India 1880 ca. AlbumenInflated bullock skins for ferry boats in Sutlej River. India 1900 caLepros beggars in a foggy morning. India 1900 caTwo lepers. India 1900Bamboo basket makers. India 1900 caLucknow. Husainabad Imanbara or Palace of Lights. India 1900 caTamil woman. Ceylon Colombo. Photographer Skeen silver printThe Fortress of Gwalior, India.1890. AlbumenTibetan Monks .Tibet beginning of 1900. Silver print
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