First as documentation, then as constructed history
Adeftly framed shot displays a detail of a sundial at the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur. The light in the photograph is remarkably conceived, exhibiting a mastery of the very elemental nature of photography. Another photograph constitutes an aerial view, taken from the roof of the Gulbarga mosque, where one sees a cluster of small domes that surround a towering one. Then, there is a fantastic detail of the central column at the Diwan-i-Khas at Fatehpur Sikri; two fantastic low angle shots, one of an arched-ceiling at Bijapur and the other of the intricately carved cupola of the Tejapala temple at Mount Abu.
All these images outstandingly delineate the diversity in form and style of what can be put under the umbrella term for Indian architecture. These images are part of an exhibition titled Andreas Volwahsen: Living Architecture at Tasveer. Volwahsen is a wellknown architectural historian and the images which constitute this exhibition were originally taken to illustrate two of his books, Living Architecture: Islamic India (1968) and Living Architecture: India (1971).
The East India Trading Company arrived in the Indian subcontinent in the late 1840s. It took them 17 years to formally aid the British Empire to establish dominion over the newly acquired colony. One of the most remarkable imports of colonialism to India is perhaps photography — a technology of magical proportions that could capture real-life in images. Photography served as the primary means of documentation, an exercise that the British Raj put a lot of emphasis on. From the early daguerreotypes, and carte-de-visites to the cabinet cards developed in albumen prints to the later gelatine silver prints, early photography in India was limited to being a record keeping activity ordained by the regime.
The British Empire encouraged its employees to take photographs and sometimes employed professionals for this purpose. These photographs mostly comprised sites and buildings of
While the early images were taken only to serve documentative purposes, constituting only generic shots of structures, Volwahsen’s knowledge of and interest in architecture aids him in understanding the importance of every detail and intricacy of a particular building.
architectural importance, and later ethnography. The first photographer to create an extensive photographic record of Indian architecture was James Fergusson (1808–86), a Scottish merchant whose travels to Calcutta inspired him to explore architectural history. Fergusson began writing on Indian monuments as early as 1845 and published the first thorough study on the subject in 1876. Fergusson saw architecture as a decipherable text, able to provide clues to India’s past, and photography as the most accurate means of capturing that legible history for future study.
But Volwahsen’s images are strikingly different from the early colonial photographs in one significant aspect. While the early images were taken only to serve documentative purposes, constituting only generic shots of structures, Volwahsen’s knowledge of and interest in architecture aids him in understanding the importance of every detail and intricacy of a particular building. Add to this an astoundingly trained eye and understanding of how light and viewing angles contribute towards the reception of a particular piece of architectural work. Because these images were primarily taken to accompany his academic work, Volwahsen pays particular attention to details, revealing an entirely new perspective on constitutive elements of built heritage.