Museo Camera, Centre for the Photographic Arts in Gurugram, will open “TOUCHING LIGHT: A Prelude to the Bicentennial of Photography (1827–2027)” on August 23, 2024. The exhibition, which runs through September 29, 2024, presents what organizers describe as the first exhibition in India to comprehensively trace the journey of analog photography across more than 150 years.
Curated by Aditya Arya, the exhibition brings together rare 19th-century photographs with works by 28 contemporary Indian photographers. The historical collection includes albumen prints from the “People of India” series dating to the 1850s-1860s, Carte de Visite photographs from the Bourne & Shepherd Studio from the 1860s, and the “Beauties of Lucknow” series attributed to Darogah Abbas Ali from 1874.
Contemporary photographers featured in the exhibition include Ram Rahman, Rohit Chawla, Dinesh Khanna, Prashant Panjiar, Serena Chopra, Avinash Pasricha, Bandeep Singh, and others. The show presents analog silver prints, chemigrams, and diapositives alongside the archival materials from Museo Camera’s India Photo Archive.
The exhibition is positioned as a precursor to photography’s bicentennial in 2027, marking 200 years since French inventor Nicéphore Niépce created the first photographic image. According to the museum, the show examines how Indian photographers adapted analog techniques over two centuries, often using creative improvisation to work with limited resources.
“TOUCHING LIGHT is an ode to the pioneers and contemporary masters of photography whose vision and craft have shaped India’s visual history,” said Aditya Arya, Founding Director of Museo Camera. “This exhibition is both a celebration and a reminder of analog photography’s lasting beauty and significance as we approach 200 years of the medium.”
film strips by Avinash Pashricha
The exhibition will be open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 am to 7 pm at Museo Camera in Gurugram. The show aims to highlight what organizers call the “tactile, imperfect, and human essence” of analog photography through its focus on the physical processes and materiality of photographic prints.
Details at a glance
Title: Touching Light
Exhibition Dates: 23 August – 29 September 2025
Venue: Museo Camera, Centre for the Photographic Arts, Gurugram
Timings: 11 am – 7 pm, Tuesday through Sunday
Participating Artists: Aditya Arya, Akash Das, Avinash Aggarwal, Avinash Pasricha, Bandeep Singh, Dinesh Khanna, Fawzan Hussain, Harbans Mody, Hardev Singh, Jayant Shaw, Kulwant Roy, Mahesh Bhatt, Mala Mukerjee, Neeraj Priyadarshi, the NK Dasappa Archive, Parthiv Shah, Prabir Purkayastha, Pradeep Chandra, Pradeep Dasgupta, Prashant Panjiar, Ram Rahman, Rohit Chawla, Saibal Das, Serena Chopra, Sondeep Shankar, Sumiko Nanda, the Thiagrajan Archive, and T. Narayan
Cover Image: Photos by Pradeep Dasgupta and Rohir Chawla. All image courtesy: Museo Camera
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