Friday, December 31, 2010

Following the Box - Part 1

Twenty years ago, Jerri Zbiral and I bought a shoebox at the estate sale of a photographica collector. There were no markings on the box and his widow had no information at all about what it contained. Inside the box were 130 brown envelopes, each containing a 4x5” negative with a vintage contact print stapled to the outside. The images were all from India. The negatives had ink notations indicating they were taken in 1945 by the "10th P.T.U." There was no information about what that was. All we knew was that the imagestemples, portraits, village life, ethnographic studies and occasional military scenes—were remarkable. It seemed likely that the photographs were made by a skilled U. S. Army photographer, but who it was or why the pictures were made remained a mystery.





Jerri and I marveled about the quality of the work and wondered about its story.

Then we stored the box on a shelf and didn't look at the collection again for 15 years. This is what happens when you get older.







A long time ago, I was on my way to a Ph.D. In Theoretical Anthropology with additional studies in Fine Arts Photography at Indiana University when I got sidetracked by the sixties. I never finished the degree and instead came to Chicago where I founded the Inner-City Photo Workshop, teaching photography to high-school drop-outs in one of the city's most distressed areas. Later I worked as photo researcher for the Field Museum, eventually starting a museum exhibit and design company. I never lost my love of anthropology, which is why that box of India photos was so intriguing. About 5 years ago, I taught a course on Photography and Anthropology at Lake Forest College. It was a perfect opportunity to explore the box.



I assigned one of my best students, Gwynn Mibeck Stupar, to research the collection. She determined that the photographer's base may have been in the area of Piardoba or Kharagpur, in West Bengal. She never learned the photographer's name or mission. We featured the photos in an exhibit at the college, Clouds of Fantasy, Pellets of Information. (Thank you, Susan Sontag.) Working with digital copies, students had an opportunity to work with a collection, to experience the materiality of images. Here is what it looked like:



The show was a great success. Then we took it down and stored the photos away again.

Five years passed. Then our son Max received a grant from the American Institute of India Studies (AIIS) to study the santoor with master musician Shivkumar Sharma in Mumbai. He has been there now for over 6 months. It re-kindled our interest in our ever patient box.

Jerri and I showed the work to Jim Nye, chief south Asian bibliographer at the University of Chicago, and an expert on Indian images, among many other things. He was extremely interested in the collection, provided many excellent leads and put us in touch with the AIIS, the same group that funded Max. They have been enormously helpful. We met with anthropologist Dr. Ralph Nicholas, former head of the AIIS, who with his wife Marta began to provide ethnographic details to our images. We discussed the work with Philip Lutgendorf, current AIIS President who urged us to make a preliminary research trip prior to seeking funding for a larger project.

So, this Tuesday, January 4, Jerri and I leave for India. We'll visit max in Mumbai, where we'll also meet with photographic and educational groups. We'll then go to Delhi, where the AIIS maintains an Art and Archaeology archive that will assist us in our identification of the temple photographs. We're also hoping to meet with several Indian institutions, seeking partnerships for a future exhibit. Then we fly to Kolkata where again the AIIS will help us find the actual locations of our images. We've already located the now abandoned airfield in Piardoba, some 5 hours from Kolkata. We've hired a driver and will spend a few days roaming that area (near Bishnupur.)

This blog will chronicle our travels, specifically those related to unraveling the mystery of the box. I'll post my own images and videos as well to give a sense of the journey. This is going to be quite an adventure.