The French Institute in India and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art presents Convergence: A Panorama of Photography’s French Connections in India, in association with the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts and commemorating the 195th anniversary year of the first-ever photograph, a heliograph by French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.
The exhibition draws upon works by prominent French practitioners, signposting some of the significant photo-documentary and other creative practices that networked and evolved in India over the past 150 years. Rare original works are on loan from major French museums including the National Museum for Asiatic Arts (Guimet) Museum, the quai Branly – Jacques Chirac Museum, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Niepce Museum in Chalon and the Goupil Museum in Bordeaux. Produced by intrepid travellers, writers, journalists, photographers and artists, the exhibits on view span the colonial, modern and postcolonial periods of subcontinental history, beginning with mid-nineteenth-century images by Louis Rousselet from the 1860s and concluding with the work of Bernard Pierre Wolff in the 1970s, as well as other French stalwarts who arrived here post-Independence. These works are seen alongside select contributions from important early Indian practitioners from the Alkazi Collection, showcasing a striking meld of images by Chhote Miyan, Sawai Maharaja Ram Singh II, Lala Deen Dayal, Shahpur Bhedwar, Homai Vyarawala, and a host of others.
Find out more on the French Institute in India website.