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Destroying the Negatives: M.N. Srinivas, "India's Villages", and Photography

1,438 views · Published 8 February 2016 · 58:24 · Indexed 10 November 2026

Channel: King's College London · 2016 · Education

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M N Srinivas Lecture 2015
Professor Christopher Pinney, University College London
M.N. Srinivas’ The Remembered Village' bristles with references to photography, from a formal group image of villagers marking M.K. Gandhi’s death to villagers’ general enthusiasm for the products of Srinivas’ own camera. We learn, among other things, that Srinivas became known as the “chamara man”, that he photographed the castration of bulls, that some of his photographs were almost involved in a court case, and that a Dalit worker resisted the ethnographer’s camera because the police used photographs to trace runaway servants. This lecture examines his recounting of the role of the camera in Rampura, and the relationship of photography to memory, evidence and politics, before moving to a very different village in central India whose recent and current fixation with the camera, and what it makes visible and permanent, will be explored.
Christopher Pinney is Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at University College London. Recent books include Photography and Anthropology (2011) and (together with Suresh Punjabi) Artisan Camera: Studio Photography from Central India (2013).

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