The City in the Archive, Calcutta's Visual Histories-Exhibition Catalogue

The City in the Archive Calcutta's Visual Histories An exhibition from the archival collections of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC) Concept and text by

Tapati Guha-Thakurta

Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre 36C, S. P. Mukhej e e Road, Calcutta 700025

Friday, July 8th -Monday ~ u l y25th, 2011 The exhibition and this publication have been supported by a pant from Ford Foundation, New Delhi

The Exhibition The exhibition explores the rich potential of the city's visual historias through an imtitufional project of archiving and documentation. It conceives of Calcutta of the 19th and 20th centuries through the prism of the wide variety of visual genres that are housed in the cultural history zlrchives of the CSSSC. Presented here are different ways of visualizing the nature of the modern city - its public spaces, occupations and life-styles; its changihg forms of middle-class sociability, leisure and consumption, its cultural productions and practices, its peoples and personalities. Calcutta features in this exhibition not just as a subject of iepresentation, but equally as a site from which issued the range of cultural products - illustrated books and journals; popular paintings and printpictures; posters and hoardings; cover designs, advertisements and commercial art; modern art, cinema and theatre; and not least of all, changing forms of photography, amateur and professional, art and documentary - that has come into the institution's archives. W e d to each of these genres are severalversatile careers of the city's print-makers, illustrators, designers, painters and photographers. Together, these lay out a large canvas of the public and popular visual cultures that were distinctive of 20th century Calcutta. An important purpose of this exhibition is also to foreground the city as a locus of collecting and draw attention to many unusual private and

institutional collections from which this archive has grown. Like the objects they gathered, these collections themselves are fast disappearing or depleting, making this project of archival documentation and display ever more urgent. To envision the city's enormous repertoire of social practices and cultural productions over the past one and a half century, especially its many kinds of popular and commercial ephemera, is to also throw open the rich possibilities of archiving these resources, and making them available for new kinds of research. Named the Hitesranjan Sanyal Memorial Collection, after the social and cultural historian who was a member of the CSSSC faculty from 1973till his untimely death in 1988, the institution's archive began in 1993with the project of microfilming collections of 19th and early 20th century Bengali periodicals which were languishing in different library holdings. The visual archive was launched in 1996, with the main intention of documenting, cataloguing and collating the pictorial, print and photographic imagery of the late 19th and 20th centuries that lay with individual collectors, with the families of artists and photographers, with printing firms, or within small institutions and private trusts. Over the fifteen years of its formation, the scope of this visual archive has extended over the different fields of popular paintings and prints; modern art; studio, family,

salon, commercial and news photography; advertisements and commercial art; posters, covers, labels, hoardings and other publicity material. The spread of this documented material is neither even nor exhaustive, as it can never be in an archive of this kind Its scope has been necessarily defined and restricted by the collections that it could search out and gain access to, and the kinds of material .that were amassed in them. The strength of this archive lies, however, in a bringing together of an edectic mix of pictorial, graphic and photographic imagery from an assortment of private and institutional holdings in the city. It is this diversity of visual material that the exhibition foregrounds and brings into close dialogue to think about aspects of the social and cultural life of a city like Calcutta. The exhibition moves through four thematic sections - (i) Print Productions and Graphic Design (ii) Portraits and Personalities (iii) Leisure, Consumption and Entertainment (iv) Urban Sites and Spaces - each of which evolve though different time frames, stretching from the middle years of the 19th century to the end of the 20th century. All along, the name of the city has been consciously kept as Calcutta, as it was called in the English language for the entire period covered in this exhibition, until Calcutta's official renaming as Kollcata in 2001.

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nd Graphic Design

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journals as a

key arena for

studying the history of print .and design and tlie shaping of middle class

boards, to show how it suffused the public imagination and spaces of the city. Alongside a range of products and designs are featured a selection of the city's remarkable creed of illustrators, designers and commercial artists, with careers stretching from the late 19th to the, late 20th century. Over its three parts - the art of books and journals, the art of popular print-pictures, and the art of commercial advertising and publicities - this thematic unit of the exhibition explores ~. -.... .... -.. , the sea-changes in 'Pawati Shanka?, chmrnoliihograph, printing technologies Chorebagan Art Studio, c.1890~ (Collection: Chltrakoot Alt Gallery) (from wood-cuts and lithographs to photo-engravings, half and three-tone colour blodts, silk screen and offset printing) and its transforming design aesthetic, as it straddled different levels of popular and high-end productions.

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t b q d one of its fist :.aranifestations in early Calcutta. Here, we art of graphic design

,~ster.s;pamphlets and sign-

Preo Gopal Das, Adveltlsement for Patell's Tooth Powder, c.1910 (Collection: Christei Das)

THE ART OF THE BOOK Early Bengali IllustratedBooks Revered James Long had calculated that approximately 600,000 Bengali books were ~rintedfor sale in Calcutta in 1857, among which were no less than 135,000 copies of 19 almanacs. These numbers excluded 7,750 hooks printed by wealthy Bengalis for gratuitous distribution and 76,950 tracts and scriptures given away by the Bible Society and the Tract Society of Calcutta. Further, as he said, "allowing them an average of 10hearers or readers to each book, we calculate that these 600,000 Bengali books have 2,000,000 readers or hearers".These statistics lay out the vast field of early Bengali book production and consumption, from which come the earliest samples of illustrated book faces and covers in the archive's collection. The books range from one of the earliest printed Bengali texts,

Harihar Mangal Sangeet (c.1830) to almanacs, illustrated versions of Ramayana and Mahabharata, to stories of Bidya-Sundar and saucy prostitute tales, and have been collected and documented for the archives by Professor

Mafun Panjika, printed from the Chandrcda! Printing Press of Serampore, 1260 (1853-5

Gautam Bhadra, whose book Nyara Battalay lay Kawbar? (Kolkata:Chhatim, 201 1) gives a fuller account of this collection. The Bengali Periodical Press

Page ol Hanhar Mangal Sangeet,wllh Ramdhan Sharna6ar s hoodz,! l ,s~raLons(c. 18301

What singles out the Bengali periodical press is not just the volume and long publicationrun of journals but also the artistry of their page designs, covers and art plates. Among the journals featured in the exhibition is the earliest illustrated art magazine in Bengali, Shilpapushpanjali, that ran for just one year (1885-86), carrying full page lithograph plates (portraits, cityscapes and mythological illustrations) as the newest print product of the time. Mukul, with its remarkable woodengraved images by the print-maker,

style" art of the Abanindranath Tagore group. Its powerful competitor was the miscellany, Sahitya, edited by Sureshchandra Samajpati, with its strident criticism of nationalist paintings, advocacy of Western Academic art and reproduction of European paintings. Through the same years, a journal like Bharatbarsha, begun in 1913by Dwijendralal Ray, also carrying art plates and striking covers, catered to a more popular and eclectic spectrum of readership tastes. Children's Book Covers and Illustrations The golden age of book cover design and book illustration the world over extends from the 1880s to the 1950s. Productions from the Bengali book industry reach their high mark of creativity during the early and mid-20th century. Some of the most talented commercial artists of the city left their mark in this field Prime among them were three generations of writers and illustrators of the famous Ray family of 100 Garpar Road Upendrakishore, Sukumar and I * Satyajit - who -......... radically 'Parasuram", illusbatlonby transformed the UpendrakishoreRay Chaudhuli for visual appeal of ha ChheiederRamayan (U. Ray & Sons, 131511907) Bengali children's books and magazines. The exhibition focuses on the experimentations with cover imagery and story illustrations in Bengali children's literature, with a sampling of the work of the three Rays, among others. The selections draw on the special collections of this material that have come into the archives from printing

Abanindranath Tagore. KhirerPutul, cover and title page designed by Satyajit R (Signet Press, 6lh edition, 137W1966)

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Cover of Jogindranath Safkar, Khc4

Cover of Barshik Sishusathi, 1352/1945

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Sathi, Janmabhumi, andMukuL His woodcut illustrations for Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar's lhakurdnr Jhuli and lhakurmar Jhuli have irnmortalised hi distinctive style in the memories of countless Bengali children. He is also said to have made the first blocks for printing caricatures and advertisements in the Bengalipress. The collection of his engravings came to the archives from a member of the artist's family, Mrs. Christel Das, through the contact of Arup Sengupta.

Khaled Chaudhuri

A legendary name in Bengali theatre, poster artist, illustrator, cover designer, musician and singer, Khaled Chaudhuri (b.1919) was described by the thespian Sombhu Mitra as "a man of extraordinary powers. He can draw, play any musical instrument, teach singing

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Cover of Gopal Haldar, Bharater Bhasha (1960)

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and think of a thousand new things at any given time". An involved worker in the IPTA, his stage sets and design were integral to such classics of the Bengali - theatre as Raktakarabi and Evam Indrajit. Paid ten rupees for his first magazine cover designs in 1945, Khaled Chaudhuri subsequentlywent on to make the covers for approximately 15,000books in Bengali, Hindi, Assamese and Enghsh. In the mid-20th century, he joined Satyajit Ray, Makhan Datta Gupta and Surya Roy in the league of creative artists who turned the practice of cover design and illustrations into a memorable art form.

The Aesthetics of the Popular Print Once dismissed under the generic category of 'bazaar art' or 'calendar pictures: this genre of realist mythological pictures that filled the popuIar art market of late 19th century Calcutta and other parts of India have today emerged as the subject of close scholarly scrutiny, and objects of collecting, display and connoisseurship. The pictures reproduced in the archives come out of a few such old and new Calcutta collections of this material. While R.P. Gupta marked a pioneering early interest in collecting this genre of popular art during the 1970s, Sanjeet Chowdhury, who has assembled a singular collection of these prints from Calcutta and Western India, represents today's new generation of specialized collectors of this art.

THE R.P. GUPTA COLLECTION Our archives' incursions into the milieu of the popular picture productions of 19th century Calcutta began with the outstanding collection of Radha Prasad Gupta (1921-2000). BibIiophile, collector, raconteur and man of letters, "Shatul Babu" (as he was known to friends) stood for

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the best traditions of antiquarianism and encyclopaedic knowledge in the city. With a magpie gift for picking up anecdotes, information and old objects, he showed how driving interest and passion, rather than money, could make a collection. Born in Cuttack, he came to study in Calcutta during the war years, and spent several years doing odd jobs before he became a copywriter at the firm of J. Walter Thompson in the early 1950s. Working as a Public Relations O5cer with Tata Iron and Steel Company from 1956 till his retirement in 1980, he spent most of his spare time hunting out books, paintings, prints and popular ephemera to fill every corner of his home. He turned avidly to writing in his retirement years, authoring two delightful books, Kolkatar Pheriwalar Dak (1984) and Machh ar Bangali (1989).

R.P. Gupta at h s home photograph by Sanjeet Chowdhury, 191

The archive is fortunate to hold a record of the fascinating variety of 19th century popular pictures and prints that formed his collection. Among these are Kalighat paintings, Battala wood-engravings, mythological pictureprints from chromolithography presses Iike Imperial Art Cottage or the Kansaripara and Chorebagan Art Studios, 'Company' paintings, a series of lithographs on Calcutta by James Moffit, and illustrations in the paper, Banganibasi.

Poster for Murphy Radio, c.1 designed by O.C. Gangoly

Bamapada Banerjee, Shantanu and Ganga", 1906 (Collection: Sanjeet Chowdhuly

7he Art of Advertising 'Ihe category of 'industrial and decorative arts' dates back to the beginnings of colonial art education in India in the mid 19th century, when it had as it key referent the traditional rural and artisanal crafts of the country. Over the early years of the 20th century, a new nomenclature of 'commercial art' came into place within professional art circles, and found its articulation in the illustrating and designing of books, advertisements, labels, signs, posters, and a growing variety of publicity products. A landmark development was the founding of the Indian Institute of Art in Industry at Artistry House in 1947, with the aim of bringing together the skills of traditional craftsmanship and modern industrial and graphic design. By

this time, 'commercial art' had emerged as an important department within the Government School of Art and a lucrative avenue of artistic livelihood. In the subsequeni decades, Calcutta became the country's most flourishing centre of advertising, led by firms like J. Walter Thompson and D. J. Keymer, and was home to some of the country's most talented commercial artists. Art in Industry

To remind India fhatprinting is a craft, inferiordecorating an art, and industrial design a highly skilledprofession.. . - this was the intention with which the Indian Institute of Art in Industry came up in the city in 1947 as a pioneering forum for the promotion of commercial design. The movement began with the organisation of the first commercial art exhibition under this name, at the Government School of Art, Calcutta

best industrial designs of the year, and Jamini Roy, who contributed designs for many of the products sold at their exhibitions. Running competitions for tourist posters, cover designs, press advertisements and commercial art, the prize-winning exhibits would appear in the annual journal of the Institute of Art in Industry, edited by Ajit Mookerjee. From Print$ Pages to Products Advertisements, featuring a variety of indigenous'consumer goods and services and the work of local artists, found a stronghold in Bengali journals and newspapers. In the large body of these early advertising imagery, copied from journals l i e Prabasi and Bharatbarsha and newspapers like Hindusthan Standard, anda Bazar Patrika, we see a transition over the early 20th century from the preponderance of text and line-drawings to ons with colour and graphic design, from earlier techniques ofwoodengraving and lithographyto multi-tone block printing. Equally

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Pages from he journal, Art in lndust~~, No. 4,1950

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Photo Engraving Company, that was started in 1924 at Beniatola Lane by three exemployees of U. Ray & Sons. We are grateful to the present owner of the firm, Shyamal Bhattacharya, for access to this collection. Juxtaposednext are examples of some of the smallest and the largest of the new forms of advertising and publicity images that came into circulation in the first decades of the 20tl century. Matchbox Labels Widely in use from the 1880s, the early influx of imported match boxes (from British, Swedish and Austrian companies) began to find stiEcompetition from local products,

Indian Railwaysadvertisement, Juganfar, 1939

significant is the move of advertisements from the printed page to labels and covers of the products themselves. The archives contain a fascinating collection of such product logos and labels from the printing firm of Indian

Labd of a dog brand mustard oil (Collection: lndiam Photo Engraving Company)

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Match box Labels (Collection: Parima

as match box production became a major Swadeshi enterprise. By the 1920s, the market came to be dominated by a Swedish match company that set itself up in India as WIMCO. What is remarkable is the creative investment in designing labels of such a tiny consumer item. As foreign company matchboxes deployed a variety of Indian images to compete with Swadeshi products on the local market, we find nationalist icons, photographs of local nautch girls and singers like Miss Gauhar Jan, and cameos from Ravi Varma's mythological paintings all entering the miniscule space of these matchbox labels. This rare collection belongs to Parimal Ray and was made available for the archives by Soumen Pal. Street Hoardings and Signboards Large-sized painted hoardings and sign boards became the most visually compelling form of publicity for all kinds of products, services

Rdvertisement of the Publicity Society of India, 1 Waterloo Street

Hoarding of Gold Flake cigarettes (Collection: Parimal Ray)

Family Pianning adveliisement hoard~ng,produced by Bengal Enamels, Palta. (Coilection: Parimal Ray)

and amenities - ranging from foreign to local manufacture brands, from cigarettes to newspapers, from savings and family planning schemes to the signage of public toilets. There were organisations like the Publicity Society of India at 1Waterloo Street, taking on orders for all kinds of hoardings, kiosks and signposts, several local enamel manufacturing firms producing them, and street painters who were skilled in enlarging images and lettering from a small copy. This unique collection of Parimal Ray has preserved for posterity the city's disappeared art of enamel sign board painting.

THE PARIMAL RAY COLLECTION His collecting was inspired by his close associates, R.P. Gupta and the veteran thespian, Basanta Chowdhury. L i e them, Parimal Ray (born 1936, who worked most of his career in a Japanese export and import firm) scoured the city's streets, fairs, markets, dealer shops and junkyards in pursuit of rare objects and popular ephemera. In his case, the collectibles stretched from coins, paintings, sculptures and books to matchbox covers, cinema and commercial theatre posters and booklets to the most exceptional item of enamel sign boards that have been called the "street jewellery" f a bygone era. He contributed some of Parimal Ray in the verandah of n's house - oholoaraoh bv Kazi An~rbanICo~nesv: these period pieces for ~an~eet"ch'o~dhury) the films of his mentor, Satyajit Ray. This treasure trove, stored in his home at Shyamananda Road, Bhawanipur, was recently brought to light in two exhibitions held at Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, and Calcutta Information Centre. Parimal Ray has given our archives generous and unlimited access to all parts of his exceptional collection.

The exhibition's visualization of the worlds of commercial art and consumer goods the cinema and theatre of the early and 20th century city is singularly indebted collection.

Masters of Commercial Design Amada Munshi

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Amada Munshi (1905-1984) was the senior-most of the generation of profession commercial artists whose individual contributions are serially featured here. A student of the Government School of Art fr 1925-28, he began his career as a card-writ( and showcase artist for the Army and Navy Stores, &st in Calcutta and then in Bombaj While in Bombay, he joined the Times of In advertising section and worked under Chru Moorehouse from 1930-35. He moved to where

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Illustrationsof Gandhl in the Jugantars Obiluaty Issue, 1% February 1948

ed his way to h- W, e firmfirm In 1958, hs wsls became one of the fo

Advertisement for Panlyn tonlc of Calcutta Chemicals (Collection: Bhagavan Das Gangoly)

time. He also did book illustrations, wrote lilm scripts and designed costumes and sets for Harisadhan Das Gupta Productions. During the last decade of his life, he turned avidly to watercolour painting and held an exhibition at Chitrakoot Art Gallery in 1995.

for his own print studio, Unit 62, July 1966 (Collection: Bhagavan Das Gangoly)

Ranen Ayan Datta

Raghunath Goswami

Acclaimed painter, commercial artist ar;d doyen of advertising .art, Ranen Ayan Datta was best known for his internationaltrade fair pavilions, calendar designs and the many corporate campaigns - - he ran for Tata Steel, ICI, Phillips, Chloride and GKW during the 1960s and 1970s. Most evocative were his detailed mythological illustrations for two local products, labakusum and Shaliiar hair ailil. Excelling

A contemporary and dose associate of Ayan Datta, Raghunath Goswami's (19311995) forte lay in book and graphic design, in the making- of short documentary and chiien's &s, and in the art of puppetry. In 1952, he joined J. Walter Thompson as Art Director and worked as the creative head of several other agencies, before launching his AUgUStt967 own design company in (Collection: Uma 5 1961. In his later career, he devoted himself particularly to the of folk art forms and a c h i i e d s puppet theatre, for which he won the State cade ern^( award. Among his h e s t works, documented ( for the archives from his family collection, are some early lay-outs of his advertisement compositionsfor Tata Steel, Titagarh Paper and Jabakusum Hair Oil from the 1950s and the many art calendars he designed for firms like Guest Keen Williams, Phillips, Burmah Shell and Indian Airlines, from the 1960s to the 1980%whic became coveted display item in middleclass homes of the time.

college of Art, which he joined in 1943, he graduated with a first class first degree and was selected by Annada Munshi to work for the advertising agency Pracharika. From his position as Chief Artist at Publicity Forum, he went on to work at Stronach & Co. and Walter Thompson (later Hindustan Thompson Associates), until he launched his own agency, RAD Associates, in 1974. A holder of many awards and distinctions, he held several exhibitions of his paintings and commercial art from 1954 to the Mythological illustrations as advedsement tor 2000s. Kite Flying, calendar page, November 1964 (Colledtin: Ranen Ayan Dutta)

Shallmar coconut 011,c.1970 (Collectton Ranen Ayan Dutta)

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Adverlsementsfor Tata Steel, (Collection: Uma Goswami)

Das' Rupasi Bangla and Bibhuti Bhushads Aam Aantir Bhepu were two memorable products of these years. He ended his stint in advertising with the historic success of Pather Panchali in 1957, but continued famously

Lay out of adverlisement designs to do the art work and by Satyaj~tRay, done at DJ. design for all posters and Keymet, m the Raghunath Goswam1cdlecoon, c.1950 promotional material for his films - some of which are shown here. Renewing the publication of the familfs children magazine, Sandesh, in 1960, the film maker was equally well known in Bengal for his authored and illustrated children's books.

Poster for Debr, date of release, 19th Februaly 1960 (From Parlmal Ray's wllection)

2 Portraits and Personalities This section of the exhibition looks at the many forms of the modern portrait - in paintings, prints and photography - and the ways they framed new notions of personhood and subjectivities in the city. It weaves a connecting thread between the evolving conventions of Jarnini Roy, Child's face, tempera on board, not dated pictorial and photographic (Collection:Calcuna Infonation Centre) portraiture and the imaging of some of Calcutta's celebrated personalities, from the worlds of literature, art, music, dance, cinema and politics. On view is a gallery of heads and figures, where the anonymous take their place alongside many known personalities of greater or lesser eminence. The art of the portrait can be seen to move from Academic life study into a variety Studio photograph of indira Debi of modern and modernist art Chaudhuranl. 1915 (Colidion. Slddhafla Ghosh) styles, from the props and poses of early studio photography to the changing practices of family, salon and art photography. It also enters the circuit of Calcutta's popular prints, commercial art and advertising. Kanan Debi, Columbia Rewrds pamphlet, October 1948 (Collection: Barada Gupta)

From the Class Rooms of the Government School of Art Training in realistic life study became an integral feature of colonial art-education in

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the Government School of Art, Calcutta, which was founded in 1854 under the name of the School of Industrial Arts. Hari Narayan Bose, waterwlo Marking its transition to a 'fine arts' institution, the art of Academic portraiture and figure studies developed by the 1870s into a particular fofi of the Cala art school a remained it strong poin throughout I 20th centur

studies by students and teachers were sourced from the institution's collections in 1996, courtes Principal Biian Bihari Das. dry pastel,-c.1920

Babus, Bibis and ReaCZife DtIrinilies

Surendra Nalh BanerjE (chromoiilhograph.cl (Collection:Sanjeel Ct the earliest a chromolitho, to circulate a of British an1 alongside its Mytho-Pictu of these port prints of the European an painting dist niythologica

Over the middle and later years of the 19th century, a rich variety of 'bazaar' paintings and picture-prints made ingenious use ofthe new forms of the posed portrait. The ovalshaped framed medallion portrait finds its way into these examples of the citfs' Kalighat paintings, as does the conventions of seated portraiture. siar compositional formats and postures of figures of the Kalighat painting (Collection: R.P. Gupta) courtesan travel from Kalighat paintings into oil and tempera

'Holy Family",anonymous oil painting (Collection:Chiirakoot Art Gallery)

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paintings and chromolithographs produced for the popular market in the same years. Drawing on the new illusionist conventions of oil painting and print-making, gods turn 'life-lie' in a number of ways. As they came to conform to the Academic requirements of anatomical similitude, they also took on the social roles of posing for a studio famiiy portrait.

A Master Portraitist: Atul Bose

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sen-ronran, .weoom loot", first version", oil on board, 1920

Atul Bose (1898-1977) best represents not just the solidity of the pedagogy in Academic Realism at the Government School of Art (where he completed his training in 1918, and served as a teacher and Principal between 1927 and 1948) but also the persistence of this professional practice within the modern art worlds of the city, notwithstanding

Ashutosh Mukhopadhyay, 'The BengaiTigei', charcoal on paper, 1922

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the sway of the alternative forms of 'Indianstyle' and modernist paintings. Carrying the additional pedigree of a Royal Academy of Art degree, Atul Bose was the most renowne official oil portraitist of his time, his models covering a wide range of eminent Englishme and Indians. Equally important was his role in initiating a number of ' h e art' societies and exhibitions in the city and in the setting up in 1933 of its oldest continuing art galleq the Academy of F i e Arts. These examples ol his works are from the family collection of h sons, Sanjit and Dipankar Bose.

Bengali Beauties by Hemen Majumdar andBhabaniCharanLaha

Hemen Majumdar, "Brajer Dheyu: photo-pri oil painting, c.1924. (Colieclion: Chiirakoot

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Jmini Roy

No other painter charts as dramaticallythe passage from the Academic to the Modernist in Indian art as Bengal's most iconic artistic personality. Jamini Roy (1889-1972). These head and figure studies, coming from the 1930s,1940s and 1950s sourced from the holdings of the Calcutta Information Centre and the Indian Museum, Amy officer,tempera on canvas,undated Calcutta features a more eclectic Jamini Roy than the one associated with the artist's famous but formulaic reinvention of a Bengali 'folk-style: He can be seen working here with the multiple stylistic idioms of Post-Impressionism, Japanese woodcuts and Bengalipatnchitms.

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Jesus, tempera on board, 1940

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Abanindranath Tagore's 'Masks' Among the reproductions of the hundred works of Abanindranath Tagore (18711951) that the CSSSC archive holds from the collections of the Rabindra Bharati Society, Calcutta, is this extraordinary set of heads in watercolour from the artist's little-known 'Masks' series, painted during the late 1920s and 1930s. By now conscionsly distanced from his earlier mitier as "Indian-style" painter, the artist inventively converts a series of known faces of family and friends into crumpled masks, costumed theatre characters and bodiless marionette heads.

for her more figural and narrative pictorial compositions, Shanu Lahiri (born 1931) has combined the many vocations of painter, sculptor, mural painter, writer and art teacher in an energetic public art career that she continues to pursue. These works of Amina Ahmed Kar were documented from an exhibition held of her works in 2001 at Galerie 88, Calcutta, and came from the collection of her husband, Chintamoni Kar. Shanu Lahiriis paintings were catalogued and documented in 2010 from the artist's own holdings. Amina Ahms oil on canvas

Aryan Aranyakam as Pratihari; Actor, Sisir Kumar Bhaduri

Amina Ahmed Kar, Shanu Lahiri They were both products of the Government College of Art during the late 1940s and among the first professional women artists of their generation. Their years of further education in Paris had a lasting impact on the modernist art styles of both painters. An exceptional artist, art historian and critic, Amiia Ahmed Kar (1930-1994)became an exponent of Abstract Modernism - until personal tragedies brought an abrupt halt to her career in the late 1960s, pushing her into a life of self-imposed seclusion. Known

Qroy, of children, The Bengal Photographers, 107 Radhabazar Street, c.1890

started by Nilmadhab De in 1862. It is at this studio that Rambishna Paramhamsa had come to be photogmphed on 10th December 1881. Women and children emerge from family interiors as some of the earliest subjects of portrait photography, alongside figures and fares of publii men. Of particular interest are the period's special brand of 'cabinet' or carte-de-visife photographs (the &st larger in size than the second), the logos on these cards allowing us to map the productions and locations of several early photographic Cabinet photogmph, F. K&p & GO., studios in the city. 29 ChowringheeRoad, d890

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Newly Weds These were called iveddiig photographs' and mark the important social ritual in new elite and middle-class circles of couples going to be photographed in a city studio within the first days of their marriage. Like the faces in the previous panel, the pairs often remain

unknown child brides dressed once more in their marriage fmery to stand next to seated adult husbands, and young men and women made to perform their conjugality for the drawing room photograph and family album.

Self-Portraits Profiled through their self-portraits (again, from the Siddhartha Ghosh collection) arc remarkable breed of Calcutta's elite amatel photographers 1 from the early 20th century, some of whom took their experimental hobby into the

commissions. and costumed

Wedding photograph, Johnston and Hoffman, from the family album of Sesh Prakash Ganguiy, 1915

Tagore was taken with a full plate camera at his Jorasanko home

Family Cameos Distinct conventions were also in place for the grouped family portrait, with specific orders of seating and standing in accordance with the ages and gender of the family members. In the two examples shown here, from the large family album collections gathered by Siddhartha Ghosh, we see a shift from From the family of Ashwln~and Abani the props and ba+,round

back the date, 26.8.1892. It is among of a

Baneriee - Familv aroutl.

setting of the studio to a more experimental format of amateur photography practiced by P.. Tagore. From the family of D.N.Maitra- Family group, photographed by S.Nasiruddin, 10 Marquess Street, 1900

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Several of his ~ r m ~ ycoomar ot (PC) Tagore (1 photographs Self Portmit, c.1900 appear in other family collections within hi social circles. His self-portraitswere accompanied by several images of formal gatherings at hi Emerald Bower mansion on Barrackpore Trunk Road.

. hllosophy professor, Ambiika ,and married at the age of 12 to endranath Datta, Annapurna Datta (1894-1976) was known among family and friends as "Artist-Mashima". Said to be the earliest woman photographer in the city to take on ~hotographyas z livelihood she lad special access to Muslim family

'de commercial and r reputation in the circuit ition photography. The m d figure study shown .otuvre of postal-portfolio

outside Varanasi. During these years, she and her sister, Monobiia (later married to B i d Roy), both had their photographs published in magazines like The IIIusrrated Weekly. Moving to Calcutta after her marriage in 1946, she continued her work in amateur salon and. . family. photography and was President Photographic Association of Bengal. Her withdrawal from the public domain is reflected in her later intensive focus on the ~ortrayal u ~ a ~ ~ u u utitled ~ & nWhen , the world is young", of family C a m 1878 members. Now over 90 years old, she (along with Ahmed Ali)represents the last of a generation of photographers represented in our archives.

Parimal Goswami, Kamakshiprasad Chattopadhyay Together they epitomized the figure of the intellectual as photographer in mid-20th century Calcutta. Both developed their special repertoire of portraits of the city's cirde of scholars, writers, poets and artists of which they were an integral part. Satirist and essayist,

PrafullaChandra Ray, 0.1940 Kazi Nazrul Islam, c. 1940

Parimal Goswami (1897-1976) was associated with the journal Prabasi, edited Shanibarer Chithi for a while, and worked in the editorial department of the newspaper Jugantar,

Kama!shi Prasad Chattopadhyay: Manik Bandopadhyay, 25th Januaty 194'2 411Dam, s~gned17.11.1941

between 1945 and 1964. He also had a parallel career as a radio commentator and publicity officer of different companies. With a greater literary repute as poet and author of children's books and detective fiction, Kamakshiprasad Chattopadhyay (1917-1976) was editor of the children's magazine Rangmashal, and worked for some years as an assistant of Sudhindranath Datta in the Damodar Valley Corporation. Parimal Goswami's photographs in the archive came from his son, Himanish Goswami; Kamakshiprasad's works, from his wife, Rekha Chattopadhyay.

Ahmed Ali The archives' largest selection of photographs of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s Wesi Bengai's Chief Minister, Bidhan Chandra Roy, treating patients before going to Writeh Building, 1960

come from the outstanding collection of Ahmed Ali (born 19231, all of which are meticulously preserved and captioned in the negative cabinets that survive in his old studio at 21 Palace court on ~ y d Ustad Bade Ghuiam Street. Unlike the other photographers profiled in this section Ahmed Ali made his career as a thriving commercial photographer, and stands as the most successful representative of the world of industrial, advertising and fashion photography in mid-20th century Calcutta. Born into a family of eminent litterateur.

-

Ahmed Ali began his professional career at the age or 17 with -. the firm of Bourne and Shepherd and went on to establish his own firm, Universal Jamini Roy m his s Camera Arts (UNICA) in 1940, which still functions from its original location. The eminent faces he captures here were all part of his commissioned work, and stand juxtaposed with his creative use of faces and expressions in his advertising campaigns. More than 500: of his images were chosen and reprinted for our archives by the photographer himself.

28

Columbia Records and covers of the radio magazine, Beta Jagat, during the 1 9 4 0 are ~~ from the collection of the musician Barada Gupta (1918-2000). A descendant of the famous tappa singer, Ramnidhi Gupta, Barada

which won three consecutive annual awards between 1939 and 1941in the All Bengal Music Conference. Later, he was a member of Yantrisangha which took p a t in several musical programmes of the Calcutta itation of the All India

elder brother, Sarada Gupta, an orchestra,

singers and musicians in the city.

L

Mira Deb Barman, BemJagat, 1sl Ostober 1940

Leisure, Consumption, Est within middle-class lives in kinds of changing lifestyles consumption can we trace bric of leisure?What were the

bridging different segments of high and popular tastes? This section of the exhibition makes use of the archive's vast collection of commercial art and photographs to present some aspects of these social worlds of leisure,

bin these social circles, of consumption from food and consumer goods to the new products and performances of the expanding entertainment industry that constituted the cultural Me of the early and mid-20th century city. It specially highlights the growing powers of advertising and publicity in defining the city's new cultures of commodity and

Advertisement of Orient Fans (Coliecbon' lnd~anPhoto Engraving Company)

F'

Advertisement for Bangaiakshmi Hotel, Fine Arts Sowenir, All India Exhibition,1948

f";

:.:'

. 'I"'.." .s,.& .,

,**k;

;..+; *$?, . .$ ., . ,

and by Subrata Muktjee, .youth, home music 2Mh August 1995 lessons and everyday life on a grand fourposter bed - that were captured on the lens differentphotog-umentati series on urban life, commissioned between 1977 and 1991 by the Jesuit media

From Aristocratic to Middle-Class Leisure The section begins with two archetypal images of 'leisure' in Bengali life within and outside the home. We move from a rare scene of a mid-summer siesta of the Tagores in the Jorasanko house - the hookah, the armchair, other details of furniture and objects marking this out as a classic period piece of the banedi life-world - to a typical cameo of Calcutta's famous adda of the College Street Coffee House. Interspersed are other familiar images - of avid newspaper reading, conversations on North Calcutta roaks, hang-outs of students

Photograph by S. Chatterjee, Chitrabani series on "Domesti

I

City Sites for Touring

GaganendranathTagore, Mid-summer siesta at Jomsanko, c. 1890s (From the Pulinbehari Sen wllect~on at Rabindra Bhavana, courtesy: SlddharthaGhosh)

When the gods descended on Calcutta m 1880, in Durga Charan Ray's account, Debganer Martey Agaman (Calcutta, 18 they were awestruck by the grand archite edifices and public buildings they saw in seat of power of the new rulers of the co The colonial city had emerged by then as unportant site for touring, both for those zame to visit it and those who resided in it. A favourite sightseeing spot, skirting Strand Road and the Maidan, were the enclosed grounds, initially called Auckland Circus

I

d Auckland who had them laid) and d Eden Gardens in 1854 after his Eden. The same year, the Pagoda ns was brought from Burma and 882. It would take another s for Cakutta's most spectacular

d spread of marble and bronze

.a favourite backdrop for posters

ements, and the most popular

of the Great Indian Peninsular ning the first train in India in ',miles from Bombay to Thane, the

evening service between ooghly. A rapid expansion of

railway networks around Calcutta followed the forming of the Eastern Bengal Railways in 1857, with tracks laid along the eastern banks of the Ganga to Kushtia, then across the river connecting Dacca and Jessore, and a second line opening in 1862 linking Kushtia with a tin-roofed station room at (Collection: indidphoio Engraving Company) Sealdah. Over the next decades, these railway lines and the two terminals at Howrah and Sealdah emerged as nodes of frenetic activity - connecting Calcutta, on the one hand, to the hinterland, promoting the jute industry and migration to the city, and on the other, to the rest of India, bringing social mobility, tourism and travel. We dwell on this theme of Bengali rail travel by looking at the way a series of superb railway advertisements lndlan Rarlways advert~ement,fuelling the ctizen's quest lor know~ngthe country through of the early and mid-20th century travel - Juganfar, 23rd April 1939 targeted the inveterate Bengali middle-class passion for travel to far and wide reaches of the country, through an innovative range of captions, images and metaphors.

Zhe First Ears ofAir Travel Private and commercial aviation had taken

.

FOOD CULTURES OF THE CITY The Bengali Sweet Tooth

,

. ", earliest private

and marketed

from sweetened

Routes to hdia,

L

the first domestic passenger fights within the country that would fly from Karach to Jodhpur and Delhi In 1932, J.R.D. Tata piloted his first fights and started the country's first change its name to Air India International in 1946 in the build up to Independence. The setting up of Indian Airlines in 1953 under the Air CorporationsAct came out of a legislation nationalizing the entire airline industry, A part of his extensive photographic documentation

Advertisrnent for Indian Airlines Corporation, Juganfar,9VI January 1958

descriptions of

mention mainly milk and khoa and it seems the extensive use of chhana, the city itself, was occasioned by colonial occupation. From this innovation came t legendary rosogolla and sandesh - the mo durable among the cultural symbolsof the

-that ethereal, silkenubstance in a clay jar found in every onary in the city. Two of the most ed Bengali confectioners of the city Krishna Guin and Bhim Chandra Nag, Wellington Street - are ed here through their advertisements.

Popularising Tea Tea from the plantations of Assam and North Bengal flooded the western market and became a lucrative item of the Euro-Asian trade of the British A~encvhouses from

engali's passion for and spending on ,:@ross different sections of the elite ddle classes, far outdid that of its in keeping with this dispensation that the Western-style food and drinks that came into circulation found its best market in Calcutta and became the subject of a powerful array of corporate and hoarding advertising in the city. Through a selection of enamel painted hoardings, and a few photographic advertising

late into

concerted marketing campaigns of various Indian tea associations and committees to popularize tea drinking among a home public over the first decades of the 20th century. Under the initiative of Professor Gautam Bhadra, the CSSSC archives amassed a vast collection of the period's advertisements, illustrations and cartoons relating.to tea drinking, which formed the subject of a 2005 exhibition. (See, Gautam Bhadra, From an Imperial Product to a National Drink: The Culture of Tea Consumption in Moderfi Tea advertisements ~ssuedby ITMEB for different seasons,"Basanta",by Makhan Dana Gupta Ananda Bazar Patnka, 30th October 1948

India, CSSSC exhibition catalogue, sponsored by Tea Board India, 2005) It demonstrated the way the promotion of this new *national drink" invited some of the best graphic designs and advertising ideas of the time. Spearheading these were artists like Priya Gopal Das, O.C. Gangoly and Makhan Datta Gupta, and professionals like Prabhu Guha 'Ihakwta and Ajit Datta who worked in the India Tea Market Expansion Board (ITMEB) that was set up in 1937, later renamed Central Tea Board, and substituted in 1954 by the Tea Board of India. Markets

The city that grew out of the three villages i

ence an enormous m;

set up in the 19th century. These old markets, particularly their sm fish stalls and pavement fruit and vegetable vendors, have been a favourite subject of city's photographers. Eating Out It is hard to tell how the people of Calcutta turned their habit of snacking into a fine art. While the city has failed to develop a distinctive restaurant cuisine of its own,

developed c le 19th century a spread of covered and open street markets, in most cases, the inner stalls and their wares spilling outwards on the outside pavement. Dirty, . dilapidated, and among the most neglected public amenities in the city, these old markets are still the nerve centre oia whole way of life - of an intimate sociability of buyers and sellers, and of daily, leisurely fresh-food shopping that continuis to be the norm of old-world households. Of the 186 registered markets in the Calcutta Municipal area in the 1990s, only 19 are directly under the Corporation - the oldest of them being the

Ranajt S~nha,llish being sold at Shobhabazar, September 1999

and mishti. Both the fried snack and the

-

Gdbarl Shyambarar, photograph byS Jugantar, 3Gth Juty 1994

CULTURES OF THE COMMODITY Calcutta in the mid-20th century offered up a spectacular world of commodities in which the processes of production and the lures of consumption were paired in a complementary ptem of representation. Overt] xt

&ni Feslivai, New Market, Jugantar, 16% November 1994

based sweet developed in the late 19th y as specialized products sold at tea , often called "cabins", and the mishtir .Fried food ranged from telebhaja, to d kachuri, to the uniquely Calcutta of the chop and the cutlet. Allen's Street, renowned for its prawn ;Chacha's on Cornwallis Street whose was the *fowl cutlet", Golbari at zar for its kosha mangsho, Basanta n College Streeet and Dilkhusa Cabin ison Road became famous eating b d an integral part of the ambience :paras. Calcutta also bas its own of Mughlai food, often traced to the em Lucknow who accompanied the ab Wajid Ali to Matia Burj. While itpur Road and Sabir in Chandni oped special recipes for their kababs, a Calcutta invention was in aparatha, first introduced by ehind New Market, that has now ubiquitous fast food of the city.

Labels of Phul Renu sections, we National Research lnstit see how the (Collection: Indm Photo Engravng Company) many forms of advertising in the print media, on labels and covers and on street hoardings, kept pace with a widening range of manufactures coming out of public sector and local industries within and around the city. Photographs of factory manufacturing units and assemblylines - drawn Ali's Poster of H M.V. Records, c.1940 from extensive Ahmed archive

of commissioned

L (Collection: Parimal Ray)

industrial photographs for enterprises like Hind Motors, Dunlops, Texmaco, Phillips or General Electrical Company - are juxtaposed with the flood of advertising imagery of finished ~roduds.Together, they take us back

Hoarding of Usha Fans and Sewing Machines (Co~~ection: Parimal Ray)

135

to Calcutta's once thriving, now-disappeared landscape of large and small-scale industries - many of which like Dunlop, Bengal Chemicals and Usha still remain inscribed in neighbourhood and bus-stop names in various locations of the city. Cars and Tyres 'Ihe period's most expensive luxury commodity, the automobile, and its key attendant part, tyres, were to constitute two of the longest-runningindustrial enterprises on the outskirts of Calcutta. The largest car manufacturer in India before the rise of Maruti Udyog, Hindusthan (Hind) Motors was founded in 1942 by B.M. Birla and began functioningin Eastern India from a small factory in Uttarpara around which grew a small township bearing its name. Its most famous product was the Ambassador car, of which it is still the sole manufacturer. Dunlop (named after John Boyd Dunlop, who opened

lock-out in the 1990s, Dunlop came to be specially known for its advertisements and the road maps it put out for the city's Durga Pujas in newspapers and brochures

Ahmed Ali, Hind Motors-

assembly of pam inside the factory, 1958

I I I 11

.

Textiles Textiles as a commodity stood indelibly marked by Bengal's Swadeshi history of indigenous enterprise and boycott of fore onndr A flamhio venture was the setting . up of the Bangalakshmi Cotton Mills in 1906,by purchasing an existingplant at Serampore owned by a Bombay industrialist, for which an initial capital of Rs.12 lakhs was raised from Bengal's leading zamindars and Advertisement for Mahalakshmi Cotton MiUs, i

d

perfumes, snow, alta and sindur had flooded the market, and were serving as key visual tropes of tradition and modernity of Bengali womanhood. Most Enamel painted hoarding of Dabur Amla hail memorable (Collection: Parimal Ray) were some of the hair oil advertisementswhich made brands like Kuntaline, Keshoranjan, J a b h u m , Keo Karpin, or Dabur Amla hair oil household names in Bengal. A pioneer in this field of manufactures was the Swadeshi firm of Bengal Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals, which was begun by the scientist Prafulla Chandra Ray in 1901, first from a rented house at 91 Upper Circular Road before the factory unit was set up at Maniktala in 1905.

THE NEW ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY Gramophone Records

bF:Ihdian flower handkerchief wrfume, for

Phonographs or 'talking machines: the predecessor of gramophone record players, made their initial inroads into Calcutta during the 1870s and 1880s. A pioneer in this field was Hemendranath Bose (H. Bose) who began manufacturing and selling phonograph records from 1906, switchingthe next Advert~sement,"Nlcolophone means the IBest year to the newly Talldng Machine", Prabasi, 131211905

arrived technology of gramophone disc records in wllaboration with the Path6 Company of Prance. The first disc recording of an Indian artist, recorded in India, was of the singer Gauhar raan from Calcutta in 1902. Among the many companies selling 'talking machines' during the early years F f HIS Mastel's Voice/Columbia of the 20th century records and gramophones,c. 1940s (Collection: Parimal Ray) were Nicole, Universal, Neophone, Binapani, Royal and Odeon. The label His Master's Voice of the Gramophone Record Company was first seen in India in 1916, and became the biggest brand name of the country's record industry. In April 1931, Columbia Gramophone Company of UK and the Gramophone Company merged to fonn the Electric and Musical Industries (EMI), which sold Columbia Records under its banner.

c

His Master's Voice and Columbia

The pleasures of gramophone and radio listening, alone at home or at parties and picnics, begin to be advertised from the .~wnrrrsmrron 1940s as a IOmI-I m% coveted leisure activity. The advertisements of the record industry took several Backcover advertisement of a festival leaflet of Columbia Recurds, Gan Bajna, October 1949

Columbia Records Saradiyafestivalleaflet, October 1949

ove

HMV and Columbia Records began to pub every month, announcing new releases with the names of singers, composers and lyricis as well as the full lvrics. These colourful promotional booklets, with their special seasonal, festival or Tagore birth anniversary Bharat Record. Tagon issues, had beautifully Arundhati GuhaThaku early 1940s illustrated covers and lay outs - along with the patterns and logos of the actual disc records, they stand ( as the finest design products of the period. ' material in the CSSSC archives is entirely fr the collection of Barada Gupta.

'

Radios Though the early 20th century, the radio remained an imported and largely undordable item for the Indian wnsumer. Early broadcasting in the country targeted mainly the British community - with the BBC Empire Broadcasting beginning on 19 December 1932. It was only after World War

introduction of low-cost transistor sets in the second half of the 1960s. The Calcutta Radio Station

.-

-scale home production started in the

.

Broadcasting began in Calcutta in November 1923 by the Bengal Radio Club that conducted its program from a house called Temple Chambers near the Calcutta High Court, borrowing for this purpose a small transmitter from the Marconi Company. In 1926, the Indian Broadcasting Company was formed with its . declared plan of establishing a 'chain of stations' in India, the first of these coming up in Bombay and Calcutta in JUly-*'gust Ahmed Ali, Live news transmission at All India Radio, 1927. There CaJnr8a 1951 would, however, be a period of financial instability and company liquidations before the practice would find a stable life from the 1930sunder the new government unit of the Indian State Broadcasting Service (ISBS) that was renamed All India Radio (AIR) on 8 June 1936. Its network of stations expanded from the three main centres in Calcutta, Delhi

a new marker of social status as coration and family entertainment here are from a period preceding the

Bijanbala Ghosh DasUdar giving radio lessons in clessical music at the Calcutta radio statbn, Photograph by Parimal Goswami

and Bombay to Peshawar, Lahore, Lucknow, Madras, Trichinopoly and Dacca by the end of 1939. By the t i e these photographs were taken by Ahmed Ali and Parimal Goswami in the 1940s and 1950%the Calcutta Station of the AU India Radio (then still functioning from its old offices on Garstin Place near Dalhousie Square) had developed a rich programme of news, story telling, plays, vocal and instrumental music and educational bulletins. Early Bengali Cinema

The city can boast of several path-breaking ~

~-.,hn l%nn,-hml r the ~firnndvn~rc ~

technology of the 'Bioscope: branching off from theatre companies into the growing show business of cinema. By 1915, Jamshel Framji Madan (1857-1923), proprietor of a touring Parsi theatre company, had set up his Elphinstone Bioscope Company, and moved from screening his first films in ten on the Maidan to starting a string of cinen theatres - among them, the Palace of Varie (later Elite), the Elphiistone Picture Palact (later Minerva and Chaplin), and the Elect Theatre (later Regal) -where a Calcutta audience had their first viewing of Hollyw~ and silent Indian cinema. The monopoly o the Madan theatres was broken during the ~ and 1930s~by enterprises~like the Au ~ I 97119 Cinema Company (of Anadi Basu and his cameraman Del Ghcish) and British Dominio Films (begun by another legt in the field, Dhirendranath Ganguly or D.G. [1893-1978 which broke new grounds in the passage from silent to sound cinema. The single fig and institution that thereafte dominates the cinema indus of the city is B. N. Sircar and his New Theatres, that ran from 1931to 1954, making Pramathesh B a a and Kana Debi into our first matinee i~ With barely thirty specin surviving of more than 500 filmsproduced in Calcutta i the first decades, the archive large collection of cinema booklets and posters, amass, liom old pavement book sh, by collectors Gautam Bhadr and Parimal Ray, provide a glimpse into the early cinem industry and give a sense of entertainment package of songs, film plot star casts that were on offer.

1 I 1 I

Poster of MuMi, Ihe earliest su~ivingNew Theatre production, directed by Pramathesh Banra, 1937, starring Banra, Kanan Debi, Pankj Mallick, released on 18th September 1937

the 1950s and 1960s, and the beginnings of new genres of art cinema. We see the building of stardom, the making of the all-time famous Uttam-Suchitra star couple in films liie Harano Sur and of iconic heroines liie Kaberi Bose in Raikamal and Arundhati Debi in Panchatapa, and the rising KaboWa, Tapan Sinha, released on 4th importance of Januarv 1957 -poster des~lnedbv Ranen Ayan h a (coliection: paha1 ~ a y ) a new genre of director-led films, where we focus on some of the first films directed by Tapan Sinha. If Tapan Sinha's films marked one face of the emer&jne 'art' cinema, Ritwik Ghatak gave it its more radical avant-garde identity. With the new genre of films arrives a new design aesthetic of the fdm poster, the popular presses replaced here by the signature style of commercial artists, with Satyajit Ray leading the way with the posters he designed for his own films.

THE WORLD OF THE STAGE Uday Shankar's Dance Troupe The name of Uday Shankar (1900-1977) looms large in 20th-century performance history as the dancer-choreographer who placed modern Indian dance on the world map. While studying at the Royal College of Art in London, he made history with the two ballets he performed and choreographed with Anna Pavolva, Krishna and Radha and A Hindu Wedding at the Covent Garden in 1923. The archives hold a selection of photographs and publicity material of his performances, from the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, from the period when Uday Shankar had formed his "Hindu Dancers" troupe with family and friends in 1931 and had French dancer Simki as h s key partner. They profile the great Calcutta-based impresario, Haren Ghosh, who was then arranging all of Uday Shankar's tours in India

m

.

WEN

morn. PREENTI.

and abroad, with Bangshi - --

-

.-..0--r--

designing some of the posters. We also see the making of the nationalist visual iconography of the dancing pair of Uday and Amala Shankar. The highpoint of this publicity came with the Government of India using the 1951 pictur< Amala Shan~ar in a dancing pose before a sculpture of Ardhanarisvara as the poster o the Indian Tourism Departmenl Amala Shankar poslng before atemp sculpture,used as an lnd~anTourism and thelr USA Tour Souvenir, 1951

Thespian Girish Ghosh and Star Theatre

Cover of the brochure, designed by Haren Ghosh, presenting Udav Shankar and his Tomoanv of Hindu Dancers and ~usic~ans"for their programke';~easons", held at Empire Theatres,Calcutta,on March 18,1935

42 1

Beginning in 1872,the early age of the Bengal public theatre is dominated by the actorplaywright-producer, Girishchandra Ghosh (1844-1912). Making his markas an actor in the role of Nimchand in Dinabandhu Mitra's Sadhabar Ekadashi, he began from 1877 to write plays for his own productions at Star, Minema and other theatres, writing over 80 plays ranging from the mythological and historical to the social and devotional. Some the range and virtuosity of Girish as an

actor is captured in the series "Expressions of Emotion",pecially posed for the still camera. The legendary Star Theatre on Cornwallis Street was originally located at Beadon Street where it opened in 1883 under the stewardship of Girish Ghosh. Several of Girish Ghosh's major plays were produced here, including the celebrated Chaitanyalila which occasioned the visit of Sri Ramakrishna to the theatre to bless Binodini in the role of Sri Chaitanya. In 1888, Star Theatre moved to its present location where for sev - rears Amritalal Basu staged his productic n the

I

Star Theatre Poster: Dak Bungalow(1959) by Man4 Basu. directed by Debnarayan Gupta (Collection: Parimal Ray)

Kumar and Sabitri Chatterjee in the leading roles. Group Theatre Photographs by Nemai Ghosh The beginning of the Group Theatre in Calcutta is usually traced to the landmark production in 1944 of Nabanna by the Indian People's Theatrical Association (IPTA' D.-* " h. "WlaberAbhibyaMr series llection of Siddharlha Ghosh)

s, Star, under the banner Art Theatre, e rise of a new generation of actors, ramatic sophistication, including the

amatic director at Star was Mahendra and from 1953-71 Debnarayan Gupta. 1953-55, the play Shyamali had a Putul Kheli, ,v,,,,,w,~~, Sombhu Mitra, Mahajarsadan, 10m January 1958

/

acquired its distinctive style and form in the following decade with the rise of Bohuroopee (founded 1948),Little

its politics was critical and revolutionary. Bohuroopee broke many conventionswith productions of Tagore: LTG (renamed Peopl Little 'Theatre in 1969)brought to the stage a more radical politics; Nandikar led the way in adapting Pirandello and Brecht. By 1970, Calcutta had dozens of non-professional theatre groups performing regularly in theatres across the city. Soon they would completely eclipse the commercial stage. Nemai Ghosh has steadfastly documente the Calcutta group theatres from the 1950s. 'The CSSSC archive is proud to house part of his collection from which a small selection is presented here.

respectively by three outstanding actor-directors, Sombhu Mitra, Utpal Dutt and Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay, these groups were at the forefront of an entire movement that rejected the commercialism of the professional boards of Shyambazar and brought - to a new, more discerning, - audience the modernist style and content of 20thcentury European and American theatre. Group theatre was dariig and experimental,

Antigone, Nandikar, Ajiiesh Bandyopadhyay, 25th March 1975

Utpal Dun, M h e ~ a27th , Apn

Urban Sites and Spaces This final sed~onconceptualizes the physical spaces and topography of the city through two diametrically opposed modes of visual representation - maps and photographs. It moves from the diagrammatic form of the map, its abstraction, compressions and codification of sites and spaces, to the animation and realist powers of photography, with its role as 'eye-witness: storyteller and iconographer of the city's vistas, public life and street cultures. The archives' holdtngs allow us to think about Calcutta's status as one of the

most widely mapped and photographed citiee of the British empire in India, with a large corpus of photographic images drawing us away from the colonial into the postcolonial representations of the city. 'The material also provides important leads into the histories of cartography and photography in Calcutta over different periods, from the late 18th century (in the case of maps) to the present (in the case of photographs), in which we see the city featuring both as a site and subject of cartographic and photographic productions.

THE CITY IN MAPS As a new form of scientific knowledge and representation through which power could be inscribed over territories, cartography emerged as an instrument of colonial policy

colonial and postcolonial maps of Calcutt; provide a brief overview of cartographic productions on the city from the first known map of 1742 to the end of a period of detailed cadastral surveys in 1910 - interpolating the colonial maps with the only known indigenous map-cum-guide book of the 19th century. For a full account of this history, see Keya Dasgupta, Mapping Calcutta: The Collection Of Maps at the Viiual Archives of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC Archives Occasional Papers Series, 2, September 2009)

Calcutta in 1742 showing the Seven Battelies [fmm C.R. Wllson, ed. Old Fo17William in Bengal, Volume 11, London, 19061

145

From the Old to the New Fort William The East India Company's trading outpost in Calcutta grew through the early 18th century as a fortified settlement on the riverbank between the present Strand Road and Writers' Building. The earliest known maps of Calcutta were drawn by engineers and published between 1742 and 1757, illustrating the layout of the Old Fort William along with the 'actorv, the ;overnor's house, , $,-~,,.. '-7, & .- ' xport-import .-: . .W ).> . , . :-uarehouses, Fort William. fmrn an un~ublishedmanuscri~t churches, wEh text and maps, tilled cemeteries and Fdd Bcdt of Survey of a Pari of C a m l other structures. by C.G. Nicholis, 1809,10,11. [National Library, Calcutta] 'Ihe Old Fort w a s attacked

,

,.

in G56. Later, following the British reconquest

.?

@c%

Fort W i m was abandoned and later b demolished and replaced by a new fort, surrounded by a huge Maidan, further south

u"-"

-

y = :

rI

along the riverbank, after removing an entire settlement in the village of Gobindapur. From the Lottery Committee to S m d s Survey Planning for town improvement became a major objective of survey and mapping in Calcutta in the 19th and early 20th centuries With the primary focus on the health of British inhabitants, the need for improved drainage, sanitation and ventilation and fort construction of major roads cutting through crowded neighbourhoods served as the mair imperative for cartographic productions through this period. Noteworthy are two of the most well known series of maps of the cf - surveys for the Lottery Committee (18171836) under the stewardship of John AugusD Schalch in the 1820s; and surveys of Calcutt; Town and the Adjoining - Municipalities (1903-1910) under the supervisibn of R. B. Smart, Assistant Superintendent of Surveys, Government of Bengal. The drive towards

-

mappi% territories

Calcutta, Published by the Society for Ule DMsion of Useful Knowledge, 184 [fmm original print, Antique Map shop, Amr (Courtesy, Keya Dasgupta)

also came from institutions like the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, established in London in 1826 to educate the working dasses of Britain in a variety of intellectual and practical subjects. One of the most exhaustive surveys of the city and its suburbs, the Smart Survey maps remained a main resource, till recently, when they were updated and digitized by the city's Municipal Corporation.

The First Vernacular Map of the City Among the plethora of 'cdlonial surveys and maps of Calcutta, we find a solitary instance of indigenous cartographicproduction - Romanauth Dass's KalikafarManchitra, a Bangla map-cum-directorylithographed -atthe Calcutta Art Studio and published at the B.F'.M's Press, Calcutta, in 1884, for the use of the "common peopleXompared to

2

*

8&&15%%5:

Two Bengali Neighbourhoods: Bhabanipur and Kalighat Neighbourhoods or paras as sites of cartographic representation are rare in Calcutta. Bhabanipur had its genesis as a religious and trading center along what is now Tolly's Nala in the early 17th century. The early settlement was overlaid in the 19th century by the expansion of the colonial city and its institutions and occupations. Maps of the area since the late 18th century focused on improvements of this suburb of a growing metropolis and the decentralization of institutional complexes such as jails, hospitals, law courts, and even indentured labour depots. Kalighat: Baibaranik Manchitra (A descriptive map of Kalighat) forms part of a late 19th century text on Kalighat, a religious nudeus in the suburbs of Calcutta. Illustrating the neighbourhood of the Kali temple and the settlement of priests around it, the map is distinctive since it represents a rare example of the vernacular mapping of religious sites.

that ~eriod,

I(aI@at Baibaranik Mandifm,from Haripada Bhowmik,

ed.,Suva Kumar Chaitopadhayaya, Ksk'khetra D m (Calwtta, 1831, reprinted, 1986)

THE CITY IN PHOTOGRAPHY

as framed by different generations of the own photographers, whose works have b documented in the CSSSC archives. Charting a period from the 1940sto the turn of the 21s century, the selection also explores the city's

The most enduring visual iconography of Calcutta has evolved through the art of and record of photography. From sweeping rial visions from atop the Ochterlony

Joslah Row% Calcutta panorama, 1858

of photography over this period. Perfo different functionsfor merent publics images work with the shifting categories of commercial, documentary news or art photography.

Monument (Shahid Minar) to close-up details of slums and pavement life, from magisterial architecturalinvocations of the imperial capital to the obsessive imaging of the poverty, squalor and political volatiliq

Early Colonial Views of Calcutta Little is known about the career of the amate lithographer and photographer Frederitk Fiebig who produced these images of Cal inkthe1840s.He is in London in 1856offer

Dilip Banerjee, Pavement outside Maulana Azad College, RaR Ahmed Kidwai Strset, 1981

of the postcolonial metropolis, certain dominant stereotypes of the a t y have been continually produced and naturalized by photography. The authority and ubiquity of the medium can be sensed in the way the vast photographic image pool on the city has stood synonymous with the lived and visible reality of urban life. Following a brief look at the early legacy of colonial photography of CaIcutta, the main focus here is on the post-Independence city

.

interest at Calcutta, Madras, the Coromandel Coast, Ceylon, Mauritius and the Cape of Good Hope: Marking photography's inaugural history in the city, Fiebig's works underline the close interface of the camera with the pictorial and graphic arts of this period. The fascination with panoramas and the use of Calcutta's favourite landmark, the Ochterlony monument (erected by public subscription in 1828) for the taking of such views, is exemplified by this 1858 ten-part

Unknown photographer,Government House, Calcutta, c.1860

series by another little-known pioneer, Josiah Rowe. Over the next decades, the photography of the city's grand vistas and buildings took offwith the arrival in the 1860sand 1870s o f Samuel Bourne, Charles Shepherd and John Edward Sache, and the opening of studios across Calcutta, Bombay and the north Indian hill stations.. This selection of colonial photography in the CSSSC archives are from the holdings of the Oriental and India Office collections, London, and from the travelling exhibition A Sh$ing Porn: Photography in India (British Library, London, 1996.) Ahmed Ali's Calcutta It was from his UNICA studio and professional base in Calcutta that the young Ahmed Ali set up his career as one of the most successfulIndian commercial photographers of the post-Independence years. Gaining The Howrah Bridge, 1960. A 1964 survey gave statistics of a weekday average use of 53800 vehicles and 50,OW passengers.

commissions from lirms, industries and public sector organizations from all over India, he became a prominent name in the nation's new worlds of corporate, industrial and advertising

The Army and Navy Stores building, 1960. One of the city's leading western depattrnental stores, this landmark structure built in 1901, now renamed Kanak BuiIdmQ$ sWI stands the Middleton Street junction of Chowr~nghee

photagraphy I"this selection of his city ~hoto~raphs, taken between 1952 and 1962, he rides high on Calcutta's imperial image as the "City of Palaces" to present his own choreographed ensembles of colonial architecture and panoramas of the city's bridges buildings and

Transport in The City The exhibition's history of the citfs transport begins with the hackney carriages seen on Old Court House Street in a photograph from the 1860s. Along with the palanquins carried by human bearers, such horse-drawn carriages of various sizes formed the main mode of travel of the wealthy in the 19th century city.

With the setting up of the Calcutta Tramways Company in 1879,horse drawn trams became a special novelty, leading to the first generation of steam powered and electric tramcars at the turn of the 20th century. Red double-decker buses imported from London were a familiar feature of mid-century Calcutta, as were its buffalo and bullock carts, often captured by Ahmed Ali in tge same frame. In later years the bane of the city's transport became its overcrowded private buses and the mix of slow moving vehicles - the most numerous among them being handcarts and hand-pulled rickshaws - that clogged the streets alongside cars, tempo vans, buses, auto-rickshaws and tramcars. The entire range of transport continues to ply on the same street in many old parts of the city, making for the proverbial chaos of its traffic. The planned butshedding' of trams was never to be fully implemented in Calcutta, with as many as 260 tram cars still operating on these old lines.

THE CHITRABANI SERIES With this photographic. series, we descend from imposing edifices and sweeping panoramas into the everyday life of Calcutta's streets and encounter the activities and occupations of the city's poor. We also take a big leap from commercial photographic to an alternative ethics of socially practice . conscientious documentaryphotography that -propelled the Chitrabani team. A Jesuit social communication centre, founded by the visionary figure of Father Gaston Roberge, Chitrabaniwas a unique city institution that began functioning out of St. Xavier's College in 1970 and moved to its premises on 76 Rali Ahmed Kidwai Road in 1973 - from where it offered courses in documentary photography and film making with the main objective of spreading a new culture of mass media

K~shoreAuddy, Ch~ldlabour on Strand Road, December 1976

in the city. Inspired by the photography - - . of Walker Evans and cartier-Gesson, Chitrabani's team of photographers, headed by Brian Balen, undertook two sets of extensive documentations of city lives and spaces between 1976 and 1991,under the titles "People of Calcutta" and "Shaheed Minar'l The aim in each case was to allow an affective bond to emerge between the photographers and the photographed, and the themes ranged from slum dwellings and religious life to old age and child labour. From this large documentary corpus that Father P.J. Joseph of Chitrabanigenerously shared with the CSSSC archives, the exhibition focused on two themes that typiiied the city's street culture of the 1970s and 1980s, and the alternative social ethos of this photographic project. Elections and Political Graffiti

Until the recent civic injunction against the "defacement" of the city's public walls by political grafEti, election campaigning through wall writing and painting had been an integral feature of the city's political life and street culture. Party activists were trained to paint portraits and caricatures accompanied by bold calligraphy and topical captions, with professionalhoarding painters also taken on hire every election season. This documentation of political wall writing across the city is the work of mainly three Chitrabani

Salim Paul, Row of pavementtypists, Chowringhee Road, July 1977

i

ethnographic headings of "Occupations" and "Entertainment", these photographs work at inflecting an anthropological gaze with empathy and intimacy. The idea of a documentation series also becomes dear as we see a single photographer honing in on his subjects within selected areas of north and central Calcutta over successive months.

Esplanade, May 1991

Ranajit Sinha's Calcutta Poet, translator, intellectual and connoisseur of loksangeet (folk music), Ranajit Sinha (1937-2001) took to photography late in his life as a pure vocation - one that drove him to passionately walk the streets of the city every morning, searching out peoples, scenes and objects to capture on his heavy multilens camera. Black and white was his chosen

medium, and he alternated, Floodwaterson NarkelaangaMainI Road, 24th September 1999 he writes, between three kinds of lens and exposures - "1:2.2Normal, 1:1.9/85 Portrait, 250 mm Tele': Early morning Calcutta, the crisp feel of a city waking up with its particular sounds, sights and activities, was his special obsession. And photography became his way of discovering and knowing his own city. His posthumously published, Kolkatar Rastay Rastay (lhema, 2002), remains a small testimony to his

Press Photographs From Juganafar

'Bandher Kolkata",Sealdahstation, 11thMay 2000

tireless walking and photographing of

the city, from the river, bridges, fort and the Maidan through the neighborhoods of the east, south, west and north. From the large collection of his photographs that came to us from his wife,

~ l ~ ~ s h a ~ w d l aPhulhagan, hsat 11th

May 2QOO

iv~adhuriSinha - all taken over 1999-2000,

each carrying meticulous details of dates and locations - the exhibition selected a few of Ranajit Sinha"sfavourite themes: markets and roadside pet stalls, rickshaws and tramcars, and the citv of bandhs and flooded streets.

Bikrh Apekhyaf, Hawk& Comer,Galiff Streat, 2tst November 1999

54 I

The photographs from the Bengali daily, Jugantar,come out of a major retrieval operation of the CSSSC archives. Juganfar began its run from 1937under the editorship of Thhar Kanti Ghosh, a leading journalist during the nationalist movement. It was ~ublishedfrom the house of Amrita Bazar patrib, which began in 1868 from Jessoreand became a powerful nationalist counterpart to 73e Statesman. Following a prolonged financial and labour crisis, the publication house of Amrita Bazar-lugantar-Amrita

dosed down in 1996. In Favourite Cabin, B the haunt of 2007, with the generous onca national&, photograp assistance of the Subrata Mukherjee, Juga employees' association nh of the closed-down publishing house, our archive was able to recover a huge volume of newsprint (much of it in near paper-pulp state) and photographs of both Amrita Bazar P a m andJugantarfromthe dosed and mortgaged Jugantar office on Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Road, just before the building was sold ofE Despite their huge popularity and long publication run,there exists no complete archive of these two newspapers, making the material in our archive all the more valuable. Ihe Jugamtarpress photographs in the archives, consisting largely of images used in the paper during the 1970&, 1980sand early 1990s, cover a wide variety of city life (like crowded transport, or a series on old 'cabin$ and eating houses), and indude a series of film personalities and f ilmstills.

I 8

D i p Banerjee's Calcutta With Dilip Banerjee (born 1952)we come to a d8erent practice of investigative and innovative photojournalism in the city in the 1980s and an internationally travelling career that would later move, in his words, "from Amtala to Afghanistan and from Surajkund to San Francisco': Many of his photographs of Calcutta are from the years 1982-1993, when

he worked first for the Ananda Bazar Patrika and then the Times of India group, before moving to Delhi to head the photographic section of the Business Standard and then to

Advocates stnke, inside Calcutta High Coult, 1991

le Princep Ghat under renovation, 1989

Lathichageat the Mamata Banerjee-led rally on Brabourne Road, where several suppotters died in the police liring, 21st July 1993

become chief photographer of India Today. His images traverse the fine lines b e ~ e e n 'news' and 'art' photography, between commissioned and free-lance work, enabling their successful transition from the printed page to the exhibition gallery.

Police jeep set on lire at a SUCl demonstraHon in front of Shahid Minar, c. 2000

155

'Ihii selection of Dilip Banerjee's photographs in the exhibition touch o n some of the same themes that dominated the Chitrabani project -like electioneering graffiti, street performers and festival scenes - and offer their bird's eye-view panoramas of the cityscape, It veers towards a more

specific focus on the 'political city' of the last three decades - with its spectacular crowds at rallies, football matches or narnaz gatherings, serpentine queues, never-ending processions and strikes, house collapses, and explosive street violence.

CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We also record out gratitude to the following individuals and institutions for their contributions and assistance to the archive:

EXHIBITION TEAM Tapati Guha-'Ihakurta, Partha Chatterjee, Keya Dasgupta, Rosinka Chaudhuri

INDIVIDUALS

ARCHIVE TEAM Kamalika Mukherjee, Indira Biswas, Abhijit Bhattacharya, Ranjana Dasgupta, Rajlaxmi Ghosh, Shankulal Bose, Jayeeta Majumdar, Tapan Paul DESIGN AND PRODUCTION TEAM Hiran Mitra, Abhijit Nath

Our special thanks to Gautam Bhadra, for his indispensablerole in building this archive ENRECA, Denmark; Japan Foundation Asia Centre, New Delhi; India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore; Sephis, Amsterdam; Ford Foundation, New Delhi -for different phases of funding of the archival programme Ford Foundation, New Delhi, for funding this exhibition and catalogue Seagull Foundation for the Arts, Kolkata, for hosting the exhibition

Ahmed Ali, Arup Sengupta, (Late) Barada Gupta, Bhagavan Das Ganguly, Buku and Abhijit Munshi Bagchi, Christel Das, Deboleena Majumdar, Dilip Banerjee, Himanish Goswami, Indranath Majumdar, Khaled Chaudhury, Madhuri Sinha, N.K. Kejriwal, (Late) Nandalal Kanoria, Nemai Ghosh, Nirban Ash, Parimal Ray, Prabir Mukhopadhyay, (Late) Radha Prasad Gupta, Ranen Ayan Dutta, Rekha Chattopadhyay, Sanjit and Dipankar Bose, Sanjeet Chowdhury, (Late) SevatiMitra, Shanu Lahiri, Shyamal Bhattacharya, Soumen Pal, Uma Goswami INSTITUTIONS h i t a B~~~~ patirka.hita.jugantar

~~~l~~~~~ Association, Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, British ~ i b~ ~ ~~chitrabani, ~ ~~ : chitrakoot d ~~~t ~ Gallerv, Directorate of Land Records Survey and Settlement: Government of West Bengal, Galerie 88, Government College of Art and Crafts: Kolkata, National Library: Kolkata, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library: New Delhi, Rabindra Bharati Society, Rabindra Bharati University Library, Uttarpara Jaykrishna Public Library

Published on the occassion of the exhih~tion"Cityin the Archive: Calcutta'sVisual Histories? 0 Tapati Guha-Thakurta

First & Second Cover: North Calcutta &SouthCalcutta from 'Kal~katarNakshd from Bengali Hand Map by Romanauth Dass [Britlsh Museum, London]; Dedicabon page. Photograph of S~ddharthaGhosh, by Atanu Ray (courtesy, Sanjeet Chowdhury) Published by the Centre for Stuhes in Social Sciences,Calcutta

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