Opening up Goans’ family archives

Young Martha Rodrigues stares back at you from a photo that smells of mothballs and nostalgia. You marvel at the casual beauty of the picture — the tulle veil framing the bride’s face and the offhand charm of groom Hermano, gloves clasped in his hands.

Both look every bit a newly-wed couple in the perfectly-composed, yet oddly-timed photo. At a time when photographs were a luxury, Martha (now 85) convinced Hermano to get the picture taken, months after their wedding.

Two-months pregnant, she had posed for the photo with her dress open at the back, leaving behind a suitable anecdote to fill the silence at family gathering with laughter.

The picture is part of 52-year-old art historian Savia Viegas’ 100-strong collection of photos of Goan families, from the year 1880 till Goa’s liberation in 1961. The idea of archiving and analysing photographs had come to Viegas seven years ago, during her research year as a Fulbright scholar in the United States.

In Mumbai, a year later, Viegas helped the varsity start a degree course in heritage management. However, infrastructural shortcomings at the city college where she worked soon took a toll on her.

Disillusioned, Viegas applied for a three-year fellowship at the ministry of culture which covered new areas in sociology. Through her proposal titled ‘Family Archive’, she hoped to mine the visual details that exist in family photographs.

Viegas got the fellowship and was soon on a reverse pilgrimage back to her native Goan village of Carmona.

Armed with a Canon Rebel camera and her battered Maruti 800, Viegas literally barged into Goan homes, demanding to see their albums. And Goa being the way it is, she says, it opened its doors, and its albums, for her benefit.

Story in the picture
Viegas explains that photography piggybacked to India for colonial purposes, a year after its invention in 1839. Besides imperial photographers, travelling photographers were responsible for a large number of family photos that Viegas found.

These photos tended to be different from the ones shot by the Empire’s photographers. In order to archive the photos, Viegas used to shoot them in situ, take a close-up, or, if necessary, take the photo to the studio for a digital print.

Of the many memorable stories her research yielded, Viegas remembers an elderly woman who happily brought out her family collection, yet visibly stiffened when asked about her wedding photograph.

A little prodding revealed that the young bride had spent the first day at her new home tossing and turning on a bedbug-riddled bed. Not wanting to remember her sour face from the photo session the next day, she had shredded all photos from the day — erasing, as Viegas says, both memory and evidence of the day.

One of the photos shows Viegas’ own family, decked in Victorian hairpieces, elbow gloves, hoop skirts, coat and the works. Though their costumes look suitably royal, the background of the picture is quite ordinary, with agricultural implements and a simple house in the backdrop. Apparently, such pictures were used to indicate the family’s position and identity in the social hierarchy.

Another instance Viegas remembers is of an elderly gentleman in Cansaulim-Velsao village. In order to preserve a certain likeness of his elders, the man had commissioned someone to paint the photos, then photographed the painting and framed the final product!

A rambling North Goa mansion was mostly abandoned except for a maid and her sons taking care of the place for a non-resident family. When the maid opened a nondescript table in the corner, out tumbled a massive collection of old photographs, proof of habitation in the desolate house.

“Photography is not unlike death,” Viegas says, “an image or some memory is there, but transient.”

Insights into the culture
Photography, especially of this kind, becomes an important tool for sociology and anthropology. Praveen Rai, academic secretary at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi says that apart from being an archive of information relating to a particular period, photos enable sociologists to peek into a society’s culture, traditions and practices, highlighting specific nuances and peculiarities which may be amiss in the writings of the period.

Family pictures become visual narratives that serve as evidence of a family’s historical roots, he adds.