THE PRIYA PAUL COLLECTION OF POPULAR ART

A Special Collection of the Heidelberg Research Architecture (HRA)Research Project B4: Transcultural Visuality Learning Group

PRIYA PAUL AT THE CLUSTER

The Priya Paul collection is an initiative through which the Cluster „Asia and Europe in a Global Context“ tests the ground of the visual and multi-media agenda of the Heidelberg Research Architecture (HRA). Located in the Cluster‘s Research Area B „Public Spheres“, its aim is to better understand how images help us to grasp the impact of transcultural flows between Asia and Europe, how they circulate through and constitue different public spheres and how the asymmetric relations that characterize these flows are evolving over time and across space. Research Area B counts among its members scholars from a wide array of disciplines and areas of study. The Priya Paul Collection offers a great variety of sources which will provide a unique insight into new spheres on these transcultural flows between Asia and Europe.

CONTACT

Christiane Brosius, Heidelberg Universitybrosius@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de

Sumathi Ramaswamy, Duke Universitysumathi.ramaswamy@duke.edu

Yousuf Saeed, New Delhitasveerghar@gmail.com

For further information on the Cluster “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” please visit www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de.

Cover picture: A lady with a telephone. Textile label of Meyer Sassoon & Company Ltd., Bombay, ca.1930.Interior image: Man with sarangi standing on a globe. Textile label of G.G. Company, 1920s.Reverse side image: Snow landscape on Eid greeting card (Muslim New Year), 1940s.

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THE PRIYA PAUL COLLECTION OF POPULAR ART

Priya Paul, the current Chairperson of Appejay Park Hotels, has been an ardent collector of Indian contemporary as well as popular art. Her collection of old posters, calendars, postcards, commercial advertisements, textile labels and cinema posters is one of the finest archives of such ephemera in India. In cooperation between Tasveer Ghar - A House of Pictures, a digital network of South Asian Popular Art, and the Cluster „Asia and Europe“ the material was digitized. Over 4.200 images together with their metadata were uploaded to HeidICON. Via the web-interface of the Transcultural Image Database the images will be further annotated by local and international experts. The whole collection is available online to all members of Heidelberg University as part of the HeidICON Image database where each image can be searched by keywords, and regrouped according to various themes and categories.

The Priya Paul Collection of Popular Art contains illustrations from the late 19th and early 20th century. A large part of the collection are commercial labels that were glued onto parcels of textiles imported from Britain or made in India. Sometimes they reflect an interesting blend of east and west: Asian subjects illustrated in western styles and vice versa for Indian or European markets.

WORK IN PROGRESS

The Cluster „Asia and Europe“ has co-funded the digitisation and storage of this collection mainly in the context of its classification and detailed annotation. The process of systematically enriching the pictures with metadata is an essential work for further studies and not yet concluded. The metadata will facilitate search and evaluation of the images for scholars of various disciplines.The Transcultural Image Database offers basic and advanced search functionalities, as well as basic tools for grouping and presenting images (i.e. for use in class). The system is unicode-based, so that metadata can also include non-western script (i.e. Devanagari). The search function is able to retrieve non-western terms.

SCIENTIFIC USE

In order to make the images of this collection available to an interested public, especially researchers and students of Social Sciences, the Humanities and Art History, Heidelberg University‘s HeidICON image database, hosting the entire collection, has granted access to selected international researchers. If issued a valid user account, users are able to access and edit images and their metadata through any webbrowser worldwide.

Besides the challenges of archiving the Priya Paul collection an innovative „use“ of these images was the commissioning of a dozen essays by international scholars of disciplines such as religious studies, film studies, history or anthropology by the Trehan India Initiative, University of Michigan. Authors are Philip Lutgendorf, Arvind Rajagopal, Ranjani Mazumdar, Sabeena Gadihoke, Abigail McGowan, Sandria B. Freitag or Rosie Thomas. These essays were published by Tasveer Ghar.

THE PRIYA PAUL COLLECTION

TASVEER GHAR - A HOUSE OF PICTURES

Tasveer Ghar is a digital Network of South Asian Visual Popular Art. As a transnational virtual “home” for collecting, digitizing, and documenting various materials produced by South Asia’s exciting popular visual sphere (including posters, calendar art, pilgrimage maps and paraphernalia, cinema hoardings, advertisements, and other forms of street and bazaar art) it seeks to connect with other database initiatives related to Asia and Europe. One such initiative focuses on the flow of images in Muslim popular culture beyond South Asia.

Coordinators: Christiane Brosius, Manishita Dass, Sumathi Ramaswamy, Yousuf Saeed, Suboor Bakht

For further information about Tasveer Ghar and the Cluster‘s cooperation see http://tasveerghar.net.