Photographing the Feminine (Perspectives‪)‬

This article examines feminine subjects as portrayed by early photographic studios in India through an analysis of some recent studies pertaining to the topic. Moving on from anthropometry's scientific examinations of races and tribes, the following approach focuses on studio practices of portraiture, and ties into a larger study of the methods of visualizing women in changing sociological contexts such as matrimony. It is understood here that the photograph is a specific cultural product with "visual currency", just as in John Tagg's definition of "items produced by a certain elaborate mode of production.. .distributed, circulated and consumed within a given set of social relations: pieces of paper that change hands, find use, meaning and a value in certain social rituals". (1) This study views the changing phenomenon of femininity through the prism of the studio photograph, of which the matrimonial photograph is a certain type among cartes-de-visite, passport photos, family portraits, and others. Portrait-based photographic representations visualize acquired personae that abound in the private and/or public realm, and pertain to realistic or imaginary self-conceptions. The matrimonial photograph is one such object that emerged to accompany matrimonial advertisements in the newspapers of post-Independence India, thereby redefining the portrait of the single woman taken in a specific context and for a specific purpose. Its varieties are extensive, differently aestheticized and executed by photo studios across the country, yet its personal significance and social currency are consistent enough for cogent hypothesis. Here, I attempt to historically trace the photographic conventions pertaining to women in studio portraits, which by negotiating with innovation have to different degrees been assimilated into images such as matrimonial photos. This will, I believe, provide an understanding of the role that such photographs played, and continue to play, in systems of kinship and social organization in urban India.