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Plague Image and Imagination from Medieval to Modern TimesPicturing Plague: Photography, Pestilence and Cremation in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century India

Plague Image and Imagination from Medieval to Modern Times: Picturing Plague: Photography,... [Photography has been the most widely discussed visual technology of colonial India, and yet, even though depiction of the human body was one of its most evident and extensive uses, the representation of the dead has rarely been considered. This chapter assesses the use of photography and other visual media in relation to the Indian dead from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Its primary concern is with changing modes of representation in relation to the Hindu funeral pyre and how this surprisingly common visual trope intersected with the photography of plague victims and their cremation from the arrival of the third pandemic in Bombay in 1896 onwards. The chapter argues that the visual representation of open-air cremation reflected a range of different responses—from outright horror and disgust to voyeuristic necro-tourism, through recognition of the sanitary efficiency of burning corpses, to the heroic commemoration of the honoured dead. The chapter concludes that the viewer’s understanding of the images of the cremation of India’s plague victims has to take these different cultural and technological perspectives into account.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Plague Image and Imagination from Medieval to Modern TimesPicturing Plague: Photography, Pestilence and Cremation in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century India

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Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
ISBN
978-3-030-72303-3
Pages
111 –139
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-72304-0_5
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Photography has been the most widely discussed visual technology of colonial India, and yet, even though depiction of the human body was one of its most evident and extensive uses, the representation of the dead has rarely been considered. This chapter assesses the use of photography and other visual media in relation to the Indian dead from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Its primary concern is with changing modes of representation in relation to the Hindu funeral pyre and how this surprisingly common visual trope intersected with the photography of plague victims and their cremation from the arrival of the third pandemic in Bombay in 1896 onwards. The chapter argues that the visual representation of open-air cremation reflected a range of different responses—from outright horror and disgust to voyeuristic necro-tourism, through recognition of the sanitary efficiency of burning corpses, to the heroic commemoration of the honoured dead. The chapter concludes that the viewer’s understanding of the images of the cremation of India’s plague victims has to take these different cultural and technological perspectives into account.]

Published: Jul 30, 2021

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