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E-book
Author Dinkar, Niharika, author

Title Empires of light : vision, visibility and power in colonial India / Niharika Dinkar
Published Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2019
©2019

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 284 pages) : illustrations
Series Rethinking art's histories
Rethinking art's histories.
Contents Introduction : writing photo-graphic histories of empire -- Part I. Technologies of illumination. Through the glass darkly : the phantasmagoria of Elephanta -- Four acts of seeing : the veil as technology of illumination -- Part II. 'Visibility is a trap' : battles of the veil. 'Purdah hai purdah!' : proscenium theatre and technologies of illusionism -- Erotics of the body politic : the naked and the clothed -- Part III. Chiaroscuro, portraiture and subjectivity. Private lives and interior spaces : masculine subjects in Ravi Varma's scholar paintings -- Impossible subjects : the subaltern in the shadows
Summary Light was central to the visual politics and imaginative geographies of empire, even beyond its role as a symbol of knowledge and progress in post-Enlightenment narratives. This book describes how imperial mappings of geographical space in terms of 'cities of light' and 'hearts of darkness' coincided with the industrialisation of light (in homes, streets, theatres) and its instrumentalisation through new representative forms (photography, film, magic lanterns, theatrical lighting). Cataloguing the imperial vision in its engagement with colonial India, the book evaluates responses by the celebrated Indian painter Ravi Varma (1848-1906) to reveal the centrality of light in technologies of vision, not merely as an ideological effect but as a material presence that produces spaces and inscribes bodies
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Ravi Varma, 1848-1906 -- Criticism and interpretation
SUBJECT Ravi Varma, 1848-1906 -- Criticism and interpretation
Ravi Varma, 1848-1906 fast
Subject Art, Indic.
Art, Colonial -- India
Light in art.
ART / Asian / Indian & South Asian.
Art, Colonial
Art, Indic
Light in art
India
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781526139641
1526139642
9781526139658
1526139650