A collaboration between Mumbai's oldest photo studio and the British Library will revive archival images dating back to the 1920s
A negative of Lord Brabourne, former Governor of Bombay, processed into a positive;
Hamilton Studios always knows when a visitor arrives. Tiny bells hang at the entrance — replacing the glass doors at most modern photo studios. So, the wind often plays pranks. And when we arrive, an attendant stands in the parlour, even before we can fully grasp the space's majestic old-world charm.
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The chiming of the bells fade slowly as proprietor Ajita Madhavji arrives, and we draw a wooden chair — which is perhaps lighter than over six lakh negatives the space houses. Launched in 1928, it's the oldest studio in Mumbai. And in less than 10 minutes, she explains the crux of the studio's philosophy — an emphasis on quality and absolute transparency — which has led her to the British Library (BL).
Jason Scott Tilley and Ben Kyneswood
Terms and conditions
In 2017, Michael Cutts, a curator with the FOCUS photography festival in Mumbai stepped into the studio and questioned why Hamilton wasn't a part of such festivals. "I said, 'Look, we're not in a rat race. What we're doing is very special and I don't want to just give this away. He then asked me about archiving. I had given it deep thought but hadn't found the right kind of people,'" Madhavji recalls.
That's when Cutts introduced her to Dr Ben Kyneswood, professor of sociology at Coventry University and Jason Scott Tilley of Photo Archive Miners CIC, who work with digitising archives. "I told Cutts that I would have a lot of questions. A few Indian institutions had also approached me, but I didn't want to get into an exploitation field nor did I want to make a fast buck. I was looking at something more steady, deep, and that the children of today will learn from," she adds.
Soumya Gupta places the negative on the copy stand; Gurjeet Singh positions and shoots the image on the software that facilitates a direct transfer
An application for BL's Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) grant — which covers the cost of interns, administration and equipment — was put forward by Kyneswood, and Madhavji firmly laid down her terms of full transparency and the copyright staying with the studio. Additionally the library would get one set of archives from 1928 to 1947 (the period of Partition), but it will be used strictly for academic work.
"Quite a few pictures of mine are in the market and are misused or used without any credit. For instance, the Ballard Pier railway station that you see is cropped elsewhere. But when you see the original negative that we have, you'll see that station runs right up to the ship so whatever the goods were, they ran straight to the ship," she reveals.
A photograph showcasing the complete frame of the Ballard Pier railway station
Working it out
When Kyneswood and Tilley arrived at the studio in September last year there was a great deal of work to be done. "There were 20,000 items to digitise at a rate of 500 a week. I had not worked with the team there before and so I was a little apprehensive about the scale of the task," Kyneswood tells us, adding that his worries are settled as intern Soumya Gupta from TISS and Gurjeet Singh, a friend of the Madhavjis, work fastidiously under Ajita's leadership.
A negative is first placed on a copy stand under a digital camera that clicks a picture of it and directly transfers the image onto the laptop. Then, using Lightroom (an image organisation and manipulation software), the image is inverted into a positive, basic information like the client's name, address, date of sitting are entered and it's sent to BL.
Ajita Madhavji. Pics/Bipin Kokate
Kyneswood elaborates on some discoveries. "The quality of some of the glass plates is incredible. They have not been out of their slips for 90 years and look brand new — like [German painter] Albrecht Dürer has drawn them. We also found some early chloro-bromide prints that have to be held in your hand to be believed. In some respects, we have gone backwards in photography and printing since 1930," he says.
What lies ahead?
The archiving will take an estimated two years to complete. Although Madhavji is currently looking for more long-term interns to help out with the work. She has plans of exhibiting some it. Reminiscing the first big group picture she clicked in 2014, after her father Ranjit passed on the mantle to her, Madhavji encapsulates the essence of the analog world.
"It was a group of 22 people from Belgium and none of them could speak English. I told them to come wearing bright colours and when they did, it was difficult to envision a setting. The one person who spoke broken English asked if they could sing a song. I joined in on singing Lady in Red, and clicked a picture as they smiled. I then showed the picture to my father and he replied, 'Now I have nothing to worry about'."
Email: hamilton1928@hotmail.com
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