Romancing the image
The Museo Camera Centre exemplifies how museums can become dynamic art and cultural spaces, writes Geetanjali Krishna
Think Indian museums and usually what comes to mind is galleries of dusty exhibits, doomed to be forgotten before the viewer walks out of the door. But the recently opened Museo Camera Centre for the Photographic Arts, India’s first not-for-profit, crowd-funded museum in Gurugram, is different. Envisaged by ace photographer and visual historian Aditya Arya and aided by the government of Haryana, the museum has chandeliers made of old cameras and film roll-shaped tickets, as well as interactive displays which familiarise the audience with everything, from old fashioned studio portrait settings to the workings of a pinhole camera. The galleries showcase photography’s transition from silver grains to storage devices, film rolls to memory cards, and formats measured in millimetres to images described in megapixels. “The onus of developing museums in India has somehow come to rest only with the government,” he says. “The Museo Camera example shows that museums are best curated and run by people who are passionate about them!”
The spanking new museum is a far cry from the time when Museo Camera began in 2009 in Arya’s basement as a showcase for his extensive personal collection of antique cameras and photographs. “The idea was that through the museum and its sister non-profit India Photo Archive Foundation, we preserve cameras and photographic data for use of future generations,” says Arya. Any further expansion required a huge outlay of funds. Things fell in place when the Haryana government agreed to donate 18,000 square feet of built space set on 0.75 acres of prime real estate in Gurugram. Arya managed to partly crowdfund the setting up of the interiors and the new Museo Camera opened for business in September
2019. On display are studio, field, and portable cameras with detailed captions manufactured by companies such as Eastman Kodak, Leica, Zeiss, Graflex and Thornton Picard between
1880 and 1990. A newly opened gallery features Arya’s collection of rare stereoscopes, 3-dimensional images from the turn of the century.
Arya explains that these were made by superimposing two images clicked simultaneously by a double-lensed camera. His team has developed stereoscopes for the public to view these rare images. A walkthrough leaves one with the sense that vintage cameras aren’t mere curiosities in the modern digital era. “Photography as an art is inextricably linked to its craft, its technology,” says Arya. “To become a really good photographer, it is important to understand this.”
In addition to galleries, Museo Camera also has spaces for curated events, studios for workshops, seminar rooms, a multi-media resource centre and a library. “We want this to be a dynamic space where students can learn, masters can teach and aficionados can interact with one another,” says Arya. Within a month of its opening, Museo Camera has already begun to address the crying need for vibrant cultural spaces in the city. Last week the noted fashion photographer Tarun Khiwal gave a talk. The museum staff had reckoned about 60 people would show up — instead, over 150 did! Seven schools have already sent large student groups to the museum. “One of them has now asked us to organise a series of workshops on photographic techniques for their students,” says Arya. On the cards ahead is a two-day studio portrait workshop by Dinesh Khanna which will use a mix of classroom sessions, demos and hands-on shooting experience to teach the use of studio lighting in portraiture. Funding remains tight but Arya avers that the museum is receiving help from well-wishers. “Professionals are volunteering their expertise on our website and many photographers have come forward to donate old cameras,” he says. “In addition, we are gradually building up our subscription base and corporate sponsorships.” In time, Arya would like Museo Camera to become self-sustaining but presently, the buzz of activity around this passion project is sustaining him. They have just announced that poet, writer and photographer Sudeep Sen will be their inaugural artist-in-residence. And their 1 2-week course in the foundations of photography is already under way.
Museo Camera exemplifies how a museum can transform from being a mere repository of artifacts into a dynamic cultural space. Whether it can best be achieved by government support, crowd funding or corporate donations remains to be seen, but as Arya puts it: “At the end of the day, museums need much more than artefacts — they need passion…” And that’s what Museo Camera clearly has in good measure.