Page - 65 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/02

Unruly Images | 65www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 55–86 The determination of whether an engraving was based on a photograph is an important task, since drawings and photographs elaborate reality in vastly different ways – which is not to say that photography is any more “real” than drawings. First, the technique used for producing photographs in the 19th century had consequences for the representation of the subject matter, since, as Paul Jenkins writes, “Photography, especially with a slow camera, and in situations where the human object could help to determine how he or she was pictured, was much less likely to be sensationalist in its content than images which were generated by artists or by technicians at the request of editors in a metropolitan context.”27 Thus, for technical rea- sons, especially exposure time, engravings based on photographs usually show still-lives or landscapes, people posing, and peaceful situations. Sec- ondly, some human subjects of photographs would have been able to con- trol how they were positioned, the expression they wore or the context in which they were photographed. However, scenes were often staged under the direction of the photographer, a control reinforced with the introduc- tion of studios in the earlier 20th century. In addition, one cannot assume that in the second part of the 19th century photographers in India were exclusively British or western colonial agents or missionaries. As Pinney not- ed, “early Indian photographic practitioners were part of an élite that mim- icked key colonial aesthetic forms”.28 Photographic clubs developed quickly in India, for example in Bombay in 1854 – one year after the founding of the Photographic Society of London – and in Calcutta in 1856; at its founding the latter had some 30 Indian photographers as members. In this context, portraits and group photographs were becoming more and more popular in India, in part at the request of the photographed subjects, eager to show themselves in the progressive light associated with the new technology. A large collection of photographs taken by the famous Indian photographer Lala Deen Dayal (1844–1905) witnesses to this popularity and to the fact that from overseas in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. ‘Organising a supply’ can also mean purchasing photographs from studios, where these existed, or obtaining images from other missionary societies. It is my impression that there was frequent exchange of objects, images and texts among Protestant missionary societies for use in their publicity into the 1860s and 1870s, if not throughout the century.” 27 Jenkins 1993, 94. See also Jenkins 1993, 114, fn. 13, where the author suggests that the Bilder-Tafeln volume is actually a publication of the Basel Mission’s “Cliché-Buch” (Basel Mission Archives, QQ-30.001), and that about 25% of the engravings of that collection are based on photographs. 28 Pinney 1997, 86.