AI Overview "Hidden Histories: The Colonial Encounter" is an essay by Satish Sharma

 AI Overview "Hidden Histories: The Colonial Encounter" is an essay by Satish Sharma 

AI Overview

"Hidden Histories: The Colonial Encounter" is an essay by Satish Sharma (often credited in the context of Indian photography and cultural criticism, notably in the 1995 catalogue A Shifting Focus: Photography in India 1850-1900 by the British Council). 

Cardiff Metropolitan University

Cardiff Metropolitan University

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The essay explores the role of photography as a tool of the British colonial project in India, focusing on how visual representation was used to establish and maintain power. 

Key Aspects of the Essay

Photography as a Tool of Power: Sharma argues that photography was not a neutral medium but a "weapon" used by colonial powers to create a version of reality that justified the "white man's burden" of civilization.

The "Lesser Other": The colonial gaze depicted Indians as a "lesser Other," often reducing the population to a "homogeneous anonymous mass" to facilitate control.

Constructing the Image of India: Through photographs, the British depicted Indian society as underdeveloped, exotic, and in need of Western intervention, reinforcing the orientalist vision.

"Hidden Histories": The essay seeks to unearth these narratives, highlighting how the "realism" of the photographic image was manipulated to create a manufactured history.

Context within A Shifting Focus: The essay appeared alongside work by John Falconer and Michael Gray in a catalogue documenting the "golden age" of photography in India, which simultaneously served as a record of colonial administrative and ethnographic studies. 

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Satish Sharma is a photographer, writer, and cultural critic, and his work on this topic often overlaps with a broader critique of how Western photography and Orientalism constructed a biased, sometimes demeaning, narrative of Indian culture.