Maharanis: Women of Royal India

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This book constitutes the first significant collection of photographs of maharanis and princesses from the subcontinent to date. There are two key reasons why it has taken until now for such a book to be published. The first is the scarcity of available material which may be attributed to the fact that during the early history of photography in India, it was not as common for female sitters to be photographed as it was for their male counterparts because of social convention and the practice of purdah. chrg The second reason is that in the history of portraiture the centre of gravity is often focused around not only male artists, but male subjects as well; exhibitions, books and collections of paintings, and photographs of maharajas are therefore quite common, yet studies of female subjects are few and far between. This is something that is slowly beginning to change with a new interest in gender-related debates around the representation of women in art.

Photographs give us a world that exists halfway between fact and fiction. On the one hand, they appear to truthfully describe what was in front of the camera at a given time; yet on the other hand, they draw us into a space of illusion-through a triangulation between the eye of the photographer, the performance of the sitter, and the imagination of the viewer. At the same time, photographs reveal truths and describe facts which are central to how we understand history, and consequently, the world around us. The sphere of Indian royalty-of great kingdoms and eccentric rulers-itself exists in the cultural consciousness in a space between myth and reality, with maharajas' and maharanis' reputations and projections often eclipsing empirical fact.

**Contents and Sample Pages**