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Empires of light is a study of light, vision and power in colonial India. It examines the material cultures of light within imperial networks, drawing the colonial experience into contemporary debates on vision and optics to provide an art historical account of how a modern consciousness was forged amidst these dramatic transformations.
List of contents
Introduction: writing photo-graphic histories of empire
Part I: Technologies of illumination
1 Through the glass darkly: the phantasmagoria of Elephanta
2 Four acts of seeing: the veil as technology of illumination
Part II: 'Visibility is a trap': battles of the veil
3 '
Purdah hai purdah!': proscenium theatre and technologies of illusionism
4 Erotics of the body politic: the naked and the clothed
Part III: Chiaroscuro, portraiture and subjectivity
5 Private lives and interior spaces: masculine subjects in Ravi Varma's scholar paintings
6 Impossible subjects: the subaltern in the shadows
Postscript
Index
About the author
Niharika Dinkar is Associate Professor of South Asian Art History and Visual Culture at Boise State University
Summary
Empires of light is a study of light, vision and power in colonial India. It examines the material cultures of light within imperial networks, drawing the colonial experience into contemporary debates on vision and optics to provide an art historical account of how a modern consciousness was forged amidst these dramatic transformations. -- .
