Alternative histories
- More than meets the eye
SHILLONG, INDIA, 11 NOVEMBER, 1939 AD
Photo by : PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY BHIMI GURUNG/NEPAL PICTURE LIBRARY
Drawn from his private collection of family albums, selections on the third floor reveal a delicate intimacy between the photographer and his subjects. Black and white photographs of all sizes dot the gallery walls—immediately, you feel like you’ve landed in a very personal and vulnerable space.
These images, textured and faded with time, offer what history books could not possibly manage. Their version of the past is more nuanced, one filled with character, prioritising the personal, the emotional. Embedded in the ordinariness of everyday life, they rise to tell a million little stories. The joy, almost purely, is in the details: What does the smile, or the lack of it, mean? Why is the woman looking at the cameraman with such a disapproving pout? Why does the
subject look so comfortable at being photographed?
Shrestha’s collection attempts to provide an alternative glimpse of the past—one undermined by mainstream history, while also bringing out hidden dimensions to his repertoire—ones perhaps undermined by his profession. His collection is now part of the Nepal Picture Library, an archiving project that attempts to redefine history, injecting it with a more tangible sense of memory, commemorated by hitherto secluded, exclusive photographs. There are private collections in each household, but precious albums are collecting dust in forgotten corners. In Retelling Histories, another archiving project by the Nepal Picture Library from last year, people were asked to unearth photos from old family albums. The online collection hosts a set of photographs accompanied by texts written by the submitter, and coloured by the memories they evoke. As you progress through the archives, the single history of Nepal unfolds to reveal a multifarious one, tinged with stories of everyday people—stories of you and me.
The library’s archives imbibe stories of personal and public experiences stored inside images, shot with no greater an agenda than to capture valuable moments. The archives, then, stand to tell a more honest, and therefore, more universal story, even as they comprise personal moments.
A walk through the gallery this week is bound to produce an urge to go back home, dig out your own family albums, and try and trace whatever history rests there.
The online picture archives can be viewed at www.nepalpicturelibrary.org. Postcards and Beyond is open at the Siddhartha Art Gallery, Baber Mahal Revisited till August 20
SHILLONG, INDIA, 11 NOVEMBER, 1939 ADPHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY BHIMI GURUNG/NEPAL PICTURE LIBRARY
TEXT CONTRIBUTED BY MUNA GURUNG
Aama found this photograph of her parents and her siblings in the attic of my grandparents' old home in Jaare Khola, Parbat, tucked away with old clothes and dried corn. Soon the photo appeared everywhere. It was enlarged and framed and hung under the big clock in the living room. Another copy of it also sat on the altar in the prayer room, right in between the statues of Avalokiteshvara and Padmasambhava. There was one in the flap of the coffee table photo album and two more copies, each stuffed in an envelope, ready to be sent out to Aama's siblings.
When relatives visited, Aama would point out how tall her mother had been for a village woman or laugh at the matching mini-adult striped suits her brothers wore, or comment on how royal her father looked. She would reveal something new about the photo each time. Last year, she told me how Baajey's land, house, and medals were all divided between his two sons and how my mamas had sold Baajey's belongings to curators that sifted through villages, all for Rs 10,000.
This summer, Krishna Mama gave Aama a new version of the picture. He had Aama's headshot clumsily photoshopped onto it, a spurious proof of connection. "Well, you're in the photo now," I'd said to her as a joke. Although we laughed at its tackiness, I know she will always make space on our walls, albums, and shelves for new copies. Maybe it makes this photo feel less like it is the only one of her parents, or maybe each reproduction is an opportunity for a new story.
ABU KHAIRENI, NEPAL, 1968 ADPHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY GOVINDA ADHIKARI?TEXT CONTRIBUTED BY
PRAWIN ADHIKARI//NEPAL PICTURE LIBRARY
On a trip to Benaras, my father, Govinda Adhikari, pestered his father to buy him a camera. He didn't know that a camera needed a roll of film to take pictures. The camera-seller educated him about this. So when a couple of girls in the village refused to believe that the unimpressive gadget could capture likeness, he unfurled the film. That was how he lost all the photos that would have been among the first ever photos of the Abu Khaireni.
My father was born in this house in 1953. He took the photo in 1968, two years after buying the camera. It is the oldest surviving photo in his collection. When I was there last, in late 80s, Kafleni didi was boiling down lemon juice in a large copper cauldron to make chuk-amilo, the molasses equivalent of teeth-dissolving sourness. I'd felt kinship towards the wooden posts of the house, knowing that I'd come from them. The house no longer exists.
GORKHA, NEPAL, 19 MARCH 1986 ADPHOTO & TEXT CONTRIBUTED BY
ASHOK ADHIKARI/NEPAL PICTURE LIBRARY
Every time Father saw my long hair he'd say with disgust—"You look like an ape! Get a haircut!"
Mother would tease me about my narrow trousers. She'd say, "Do you want me to wash your leggings too?"
There is a photo of my parents in an old album. Father has long hair in it. One day, when he bugged me about cutting my hair, I showed him the photo, where he is wearing a pair of tight trousers just like mine. He laughed, and said, "You thug!"
That felt good.
This photo was taken in Bhimsen Shrestha's studio in Bhachhek of Gorkha. Bhimsen was an immigrant from the Far West. His studio, an hour's walk from
my ancestral home in Lapsibot, Gorkha, was the only photo studio in four VDCs. Father had been
studying in Kathmandu before the wedding. The photo was taken shortly after the wedding. He has grown a mustache, and hair long enough to hide his
ears. He looks fashionable—like his Bollywood idols from the 70s and 80s.
Mother comes off as the exact opposite—a homely village girl. Her attire is simple, and her face full of apprehension. "I was still a school girl. But I had to leave home to enter a new family. A very different world. I was scared of your father," she says.
"You look like an ape! Go, get a haircut!" Father has never said this since I showed him the photo. Perhaps he will never say it again.
JALESHWOR, NEPAL, 1956PHOTO AND TEXT CONTRIBUTED BY
RABI THAPA/NEPAL PICTURE LIBRARY
A dream childhood photo. Half a dozen kids atop a painted elephant. I didn't even realise it was my mother up front until she pointed it out. The year was 1956, so Jana Rayamajhi would have been seven years old. She had travelled down from Kathmandu with her mother and a brace of cousins to the army barracks at Jaleshwor, in Mahottari district. Her uncle was a Colonel there, so they had managed to cadge a lift on a plane.
The trip back was more difficult. They crossed the border to India, took a train to Raxaul, then were portered back to Kathmandu via Bhimphedi in typical upper middle class fashion. "Our porters raced each other," my mother recalls. "Your grandmother travelled more sedately in a palanquin."
Posted on: 2012-08-15 06:33
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by Abin
She’s an actress....Had approached for acting lessons...they took her in their party!
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