Dramatic life in monotones

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Before colours were splashed all over the world photography, life was pretty simple in monotones — well, that’s what most of us would believe until we dwell deep into the era of hands-on studio photography.

When Christopher Pinney, an anthropologist from UK, found a trunk full of old negatives from the bygone era he decided to bring back the vignettes from the past into the present through his photography exhibition “Studio Suhag”, at the Art Heritage Gallery from September 25 to October 10.
Pinney, who has curated the exhibition and authored a book titled Artisan Camera, inspired by the era of 1970s -1980’s photography, feels that the most attractive thing about these vintage pictures was the element of “drama.”
He says, “The exhibition features works from Studio Suhag in Nagda, a small town in central India. Suresh Punjabi, the studio’s proprietor and photographer, found an old box of negatives that were almost destroyed but we decided to salvage them and develop these pictures. These pictures depicted life in olden times and were very bizarre and eye-catching. We salvaged around 1,600 photos and out of them 80 were used in the book and 23 of these shots are being showcased at the photo exhibition.”