Conversations can be the starting point for many exciting adventures, and we wanted to give guests to our photography exhibition the chance to be part of some fascinating dialogues on art and history. Our talks and panels, held at the exhibition venue at Pundole’s, were open to everyone and invited art dealers, photographers, antiquarians and archivists to share their unique perspectives on building and preserving the portraits of a nation.
Agony & Ecstasy: Anecdotes from the Collector’s Journey
Three collectors–eminent photographer and founder of Museo Camera, a vintage camera museum, Aditya Arya; founder of Sarmaya Paul Abraham; and vintage photography dealer Roland Belgrave—came together to share stories on the thrill of chasing down a priceless piece. One of the more crowd-pleasing anecdotes was shared by Paul Abraham, who described having to go neck-to-neck with a British collector at an auction for some 19th-century photographs of India.
Voices from the Past: Interpreting the Archive
For our second panel discussion, we teamed up with Avid Learning to get experts talking about the role of the archive in preserving and popularising history. We had photographer and archivist Aditya Arya, Chief Archivist at Godrej and Boyce Vrundha Pathare, photographer and visual anthropologist Rajyashri Goody in conversation with social anthropologist and researcher Monisha Ahmed. It was another enlightening talk that touched upon such topics as the politics of privilege, the empowering gaze of social media, the role of corporate entities in heritage conservation and the technical limits that determine the vision of every photograph.