Photo-Attractions: An Indian Dancer, an American Photographer, and a German Camera PDF
Preview Photo-Attractions: An Indian Dancer, an American Photographer, and a German Camera
In Praise of Photo-Attractions “Sinha’s is an extremely luminous and well-researched project. It is also a beau- tifully written, deeply analytical, and entirely accessible book, narrated with verve, and a pleasure to read.” —Saloni Mathur, author of A Fragile Inheritance: Radical Stakes in Contemporary Indian Art “Ajay Sinha has woven a finely detailed tapestry of the social, personal, and aes- thetic allusions that contribute greatly to understanding and reimagining Ram Gopal’s mystique and presence. This is timely, refreshing, colorful, and a much- needed intervention in our his- and her-stories around dance and the camera.” —Uttara Asha Coorlawala, co-curator of Erasing Borders Festival of Indian Dance “With extraordinary finesse, Ajay Sinha reconstructs two remarkable artists’ col- laborative fantasy-making through a Leica camera, which produced what he calls the ‘photo-dance’: a voluptuous intermedial object imbued with cross- cultural provocations. As much an astute commentary on Orientalism, post coloniality, and race as it is an informed critique of the silences of established archival memory, this virtuosic study is a mesmerizing read.” —Rey Chow, Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, Duke University “A trio performs: a beautiful male dancer of Indo-Burmese origins, a cult photographer with a Leica, the metal prosthesis that acquires a life of its own— ‘photo-eroticism.’ This expansively researched book with a nonlinear structure has a discursive flamboyance. A historical moment spins into the contemporary; the language of the writer enthralls the reader.” —Vivan Sundaram, visual artist, founder, and trustee, Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation “This book arises from a thrilling pas de deux between a modernist American photographer and an Indian classical dancer, in which it’s never entirely clear who is calling the shots. In deciphering the subtle aesthetic, erotic, and intel- lectual weave of these sessions, Ajay Sinha identifies a third partner in this elaborate dance, namely Van Vechten’s German-made Leica camera. This is an exhilarating book, intellectually compelling and visually mesmerizing. And the photographs are to die for.” —Christopher Benfey, author of Degas in New Orleans and The Great Wave “In Sinha’s lucid, incisive analysis, we encounter a world of technological mess- iness and experimentation, cultural disparities, and new, transitional queer masculinities, all set against the backdrop of the twentieth-century reinvention of Indian dance and the complexities of Euro-American Orientalism. A timely contribution to the fields of both dance studies and visual culture studies.” —Hari Krishnan, author of Celluloid Classicism: Early Tamil Cinema and the Making of Modern Bharatanatyam “Sinha provides a remarkably rich account that does justice to the contact zone unearthed by his archival discovery. Both vivid and perceptive, Sinha’s prose grips from the start and unfolds three days in the 1930s into a marvelous larger panorama of representational practices, a broader intercultural landscape, and the intimacy of personal encounters.” —Christopher Pinney, professor of anthropology and visual culture, University College London “Photo-Attractions is the fascinating account, by a masterful storyteller, of a single extended portrait session that took place between Indian classical dancer Ram Gopal and photographer Carl Van Vechten in New York in 1938. Sinha’s cos- mopolitan vision, deeply informed by histories of dance, gesture, performance, and photography, offers brilliant new perceptions of transcultural exchanges of gender, sexuality, and desire in the early twentieth century. An illumination.” —Laura Wexler, author of Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of U.S. Imperialism PHOTO-ATTRACTIONS PHOTO- ATTRACTIONS AJAY J. SINHA An Indian Dancer, an American Photographer, and a German Camera Rutgers University Press | New Brunswick, Camden and Newark, New Jersey, and London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sinha, Ajay J., 1956– author. Title: Photo-attractions : an Indian dancer, an American photographer, and a German camera / Ajay Sinha. Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rut- gers University Press, [2023] | Commentary on and selections from black and white photographs by Carl Van Vechten from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022007401 | ISBN 9781978830486 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978830493 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781978830509 (epub) | ISBN 9781978830523 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Ram Gopal, 1917– —Portraits. | Dancers—India—Portraits. | Portrait photography. | Van Vechten, Carl, 1880–1964. | Photographers— United States. | Harlem Renaissance. | Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library—Photograph collections. Classification: LCC GV1785.R3 S56 2023 | DDC 792.802/8092—dc23/eng/20220422 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ 2022007401 A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2023 by Ajay J. Sinha All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or uti- lized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. References to internet websites (URLs) were accu- rate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manu- script was prepared. ∞ The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992. www.rutgersuniversitypress.org Manufactured in the United States of America FOR ELDERS CONTENTS Prelude | 1 11 Chapter 1. The Photo Studio 41 Chapter 2. The Dancer 83 Chapter 3. The Photographer 125 Chapter 4. The Camera 155 Chapter 5. Photo-Dance 189 Chapter 6. Afterimages Acknowledgments | 203 Notes | 211 Bibliography | 237 Index | 249
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