Currently, Rahul is working on the conservation of the photographic negatives of the Lala Deen Dayal Studios, housed at the IGNCA. Deen Dayal was a major 19th century photographer in the subcontinent, and the IGNCA has the largest collection of his negatives in the world. The negatives, because of their value, have been rarely seen by members of the public and researchers, and the conservation plan will hopefully increase their accessibility to all those interested.

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What inspired your interest in photography and its conservation?

I am a self-trained photographer, who got into photography from a somewhat eccentric route. My first camera was an 8x10 view camera, which was almost a century old when I got it. I was given the camera and was told to have fun. Spending long hours in the red safelights, I figured I could save money by making my own film. I taught myself how to make albumen prints, and collodion negatives, working as if I was in the 19th century. This was my introduction to conservation, because the college archivist, who gave me the camera, told me that the folks at the Getty were doing the same things I was doing, to better understand 19th century photography.

I looked more into conservation, and it seemed like an interesting way to spend one’s time. All the magazines had articles about conservators working in Tutankhamen’s tomb, or in remote monasteries in the Himalayas, or on massive old master paintings. So, I applied for an M.A. in Conservation at the National Museum Institute. I kept up my darkroom practice in Delhi and eventually ended up working for Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH).

I was the only one there who knew about darkroom work and so was given photographs to treat a few times. Knowing nothing about their conservation, I did okay, until my luck ran out, and I almost ruined a photograph. The only reason it was not a total disaster was because of more experienced colleagues.  Not having anyone else working in photos in the country to turn to, I decided to get further training in photograph conservation with a Master’s.

Could you tell us about your current project and its significance?

Raja Lala Deen Dayal was a major Indian photographer in the 19th century. The court photographer for the Nizam, and the Viceroy, he also operated studios in Indore, Hyderabad, and Bombay; the latter with specialized Zenana Studios, with female staff so that female Indian sitters could maintain purdah. IGNCA, in the 1980’s, purchased roughly 2800 large glass plate negatives from the studio, from the descendants of Deen Dayal.

Sample negative from Raja Lala Deen Dayal Negative Archive, IGNCA (inverted for readability)

Deen Dayal’s photographs can be found in many collections, be they the Met, the Getty, the British Museum, or the Alkazi. But there is just one negative, from which the photographer can make thousands of prints. Just owning the negatives would have made the collection significant, but the IGNCA also owns the studio registers, which list the dates photographs were taken, the information of the sitters, and other details. The combination of both makes the collection especially significant.    

My work with the collection at this moment is to create a conservation plan for the collection. The negatives were so significant that they are kept under constant lock and key. But the aim in recent years has become to increase access to the collection for interested researchers, and the public.

I have spent the past 4 months surveying the collection and drawing up protocols, so that the negatives can be accessed, and stored in a more sustainable manner. I am also trying to get the studio registers digitized, and accessible online, so that scholars of photography can use them for research. There will be a fair bit of hands-on conservation in the coming days, but overall, most of the negatives are stable, and will be able to be viewed by the public for the first time in living memory in the coming years.

How has your career enriched you? What have been some of the lessons you have gleaned from your work so far?

I don’t even know how to start with this, because I can’t imagine life not doing what I get to do. But I will share one thing that has been coming up a lot recently. Most conservation information comes from the West and is suited to their collections and conditions. What works in Atlanta, may not work in Amethi.

 Recently, I taught a workshop in an archive in Gangtok, which should have been an archivist’s nightmare: excessive humidity, fluctuating temperatures, and no air circulation in the storage. Everything I had learned told me that there should be fungus everywhere. And yet, the air in the room was not musty, the photographs were fungus free, and showed no signs of deterioration, except for some bookworms. Honestly speaking, I had no explanation for why things were okay.

Photograph process identification in Gangtok as part of workshop on Preventive Conservation, hosted by Sikkim State Archives, and supported by Tata Trusts

Finally, I recommended just monitoring the climate for two years before taking any drastic action. While it may stroke my ego to swagger in and start doing hands-on conservation or putting up multiple dehumidifiers; I reckoned it was more prudent to practice what I call ‘masterly inactivity’. Perhaps something I would have done may cause more damage, while the status quo was, overall, pretty okay.

I must admit, it is humbling to learn that all I have studied doesn’t mean much when confronted with the messy variabilities of the real world.  All I could (and really, regularly must still) do was remind myself that no two situations or objects are the same. They have different histories, and it’s on me to do the objects the courtesy of being patient, and diligent to understand them. Each and everything that reaches my worktable has the capacity to teach me something new, as long as I remain teachable.   

What are your plans going forward? What would you like to work on?

I will be moving to New York, pending visa, in August to work at the Metropolitan Museum. I was awarded the research scholarship in photograph conservation at the Met last year and will be working on their collection of the work of the African-American photographer James Van Der Zee. I am an active darkroom printer, and my work there will be reconstructing Van Der Zee’s darkroom technique. It is a very exciting project for me, because for the next two years, I will spend most of my time in the darkroom, printing, and doing funny stuff to photographs to better understand why Van Der Zee’s photos look the way they do.

An additional benefit will be a greater understanding of how to preserve tinted and toned photographs better, which will be useful when I return to India (also known for its hand tinted photographs), and continue my conservation work here.  

We’d love to know more about the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, and the work it is doing.

The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) is an autonomous institution under the Ministry of Culture and was established in 1987. It serves as a multidisciplinary center for the study, and documentation of art, encompassing its interrelations with nature, and society.

I currently work at the Conservation and Cultural Archives Division of IGNCA, which, in addition to having on-site conservation labs, and archives, has multiple off-site conservation projects. Patna Museum, where I head to next week for an imaging project, is an IGNCA site for the last year, and our team has been conserving the collection, which ranges from 14th century Tibetan Thangkas, 4th century Stuccos, and rare examples of local miniature painting styles. There are also conservation projects at the Lal Bagh Palace in Indore, The Albert Hall in Jaipur, The Government Public Library in Allahabad, the Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Rural Industrialization in Wardha, etc.

I think IGNCA’s biggest contribution to cultural heritage in India in the past few years has in the less eye-catching, but perhaps more important areas of collections work: Storage organization, and disaster risk management. These are addressed in week-long workshops, held in collaboration with UNESCO, and have taken place all over the country.  The state of collections in this country is dire (once we look past the flagship collections), and the workshops give visible results, which the folks can use as a foundation for subsequent projects. The work IGNCA has been doing isn’t necessarily glamourous, but it is necessary to bring about a long-term structural change in how collections are managed in this country.