Preserving bygone era through photos

A picture is worth a thousand words it has been said. And browsing through sepia photographs carefully preserved in thumbed albums tells a story of a lifetime. In a single frame, family dynamics, emotions, accomplishments, important dates and events can be captured forever.

Urban documentary photographer Anusha Yadav embraced this fact in her vocation but didn’t realise the extent of the power of pictures till a year ago. In 2010, she started a Facebook group asking people to send in their family wedding photographs. The social experiment has now grown to an anthropological and cultural project.

The ‘Indian Memory Project’ invites people from all over India to contribute photographs offering a glimpse of their family history. Anusha said, “I started it out of curiosity to garner information about India’s history and culture. I never realised that the project would receive so much interest and attention.” The photos will soon be published in an upcoming book and the photographer has plans for exhibitions and research grant as well.

In the current digital age, photographs are artfully posed for till the perfect shot is taken and then photo-shopped to alter and erase any flaws. It is still a memory but can become a contrived one. Photographs taken earlier were less about vanity and more about documenting important life events and capturing memories.

The Indian Memory Project currently has 73 images displayed, all older than the year 1990.

Through them and other photographs received from personal albums, it attempts to trace India’s past within different time frames along with people, professions, cultures, traditions and settlements.

The responsibility of preserving and showcasing the country’s rich culture and history is something Anusha cherishes. “It is a personal story of unknown people and amazing accomplishments with an important anthropological insight,” she explained of the photographs sent to her. “Each picture has a story to tell, evidence of time and collective memory.”

The photographs on the website have a short description of the people, their relationships and the year, place and event that explains the photo’s documentation. There are family portraits, such as the one put up by Anil Dhar of his grandparent’s extended Kashmiri Pandit family. Minal Hajratwala’s photograph of her cousin in South Africa highlights the issue of apartheid in 1960.

Anusha’s collective images of her mother and five sisters on their graduation day tells the story of the individual personalities.
The Mumbai-based photographer is currently looking for funding to establish the project’s digital portal. She also hopes to display the photographs in exhibitions all over the country. Anusha said, “The exhibitions and collage of photographs can provide an interesting history lesson. India has such a rich historical past and it’s important to make people, especially school
children aware of the fact.”