Prof. Christopher Pinney's forthcoming book 'The Coming of Photography in India' will be the focus of discussion at the seminar.

Also up for discussion are three smaller related articles by Prof. Pinney: 'Towards the Space of the Beholder', 'The Accidental Ramdevji' and 'Colonialism and Culture'

 
Respondents: Ashish Rajadhyaksha, S. V. Srinivas, Aparna Balachandran, Vishnu Vardhan

Anthropologist and Art Historian Christopher Pinney is one of the leading theorists of 19^th and 20^th C. popular Indian visual culture and photography within the context of India’s emerging nationalist public sphere. Best known for his path-breaking books ‘Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs’ (1997) and ‘Photos of the Gods: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India’ (2004), Prof. Pinney has written extensively on photography, visual art, and new technologies of popular reproduction. He is currently Visiting Crowe Professor in the Department of Art History at Northwestern University and Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at University College London.