Between objectivity and illusion: Architectural photography in the colonial frame

In this paper, I compare the use of photography by Sawai Ram Singh, the mah araja of the Princely State of Jaipur in colonial India, and by James Fergu sson, the earliest historiographer of Indian architecture. Contrasting the 'objective' use of photography by the colonist, with the maharaja's hybridi zed and illusionistic images, I argue that photography, on the one hand, he lped fix 'India' into stereotypical brackets, but on the other enabled the colonized to re-invent himself in more contemporary and potentially threate ning ways. Foreshadowing the contradictory nature of postcolonial modernity , photography, in other words, enabled the maharaja to simultaneously resis t the hegemonic interests of the colonizer while coveting and appropriating the instruments and signs of the West to his own ends.