Allegory and IllusionEarly Portrait Photography from South Asia

October 16, 2013–February 10, 2014
Rubin Museum
150 W. 17th St., NYC

Photograph of men in turbans seating and standing around framed portrait of seated man with yellow turban.

Allegory and Illusion: Early Portrait Photography from South Asia presents approximately 120 photographs and a selection of albums, glass plate negatives, cabinet cards, cartes de visite, and postcards illustrating the rich tradition of portrait photography in India, Burma, Sri Lanka, and Nepal from the mid-19th to the early 20th century. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, New Delhi.

The exhibition explores the democratizing aspect of photography by presenting royal court portraits alongside photographs of the middle class that were often circulated as cartes de visite, cabinet cards, or postcards.

The photographs in the exhibition are drawn exclusively from the Alkazi Collection of Photography. They reveal an alternate history of 19th-century India that reflects a transition between Mughal culture and British rule, as seen for example in late 19th-century photographs that reference miniature painting aesthetics. The exhibition looks at the form of the painted photograph, popular and idiosyncratic in India and Nepal in the 19th century, for both artistic purposes and as a gesture toward realism.

Visitors are encouraged to take their own portrait photographs in a studio setting in the exhibition with authentic backdrops from the region. They may also use a stereoscopic viewer. The exhibition is accompanied by an interactive website to which visitors are invited to upload their portraits from the exhibition and see groupings of others’ photos as well.

CuratorsCurators

Rahaab Allana is curator/publisher of the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts in New Delhi, a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in London, and an honorary research fellow at the University College, London. After completing his master’s degree from SOAS in London, he was a curator at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. He has curated, edited, and contributed to many national and international exhibitions and publications.

Beth Citron was previously the curator of modern and contemporary art at the Rubin Museum of Art. Her exhibitions for the Rubin Museum included Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Try to Altar Everything (2016), Francesco Clemente: Inspired by India (2014), Witness at a Crossroads: Photographer Marc Riboud in Asia (2014), and the three-part exhibition series Modernist Art from India (2011-13). She completed a PhD in the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, and has taught in the Art History Department at New York University, from which she also earned a BA in Fine Arts.

Support of this exhibition has been provided by Contributors to the 2013 Exhibitions Fund.

Allegory and IllusionEarly Portrait Photography from South Asia

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