PhD, Cultural Anthropology
London School of Economics, 1987
Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture
Email
c.pinney@ucl.ac.uk
c-pinney@northwestern.edu
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Publications |
Selected downloadable publications here
Pinney's research has a strong geographic focus in central India: initial ethnographic research was concerned with village-resident factory workers. Subsequently he researched popular photographic practices and the consumption of Hindu chromolithographs in the same area. His publications combine contemporary ethnography with the historical archaeology of particular media (see eg. Camera Indica and Photos of the Gods). The Coming of Photography in India, based on the Panizzi Lectures was published by the British Library in October 2008.
He is currently interested in cultural spaces which conventional social theory has tended to neglect: “more than local and less than global”, and spaces of cultural flow that elude the west. In addition to ongoing projects with an Indian focus (for instance, a filmic record of two central Indian Dalit intellectuals) he is also working on visual dimensions of cultural encounters from 1492 to the present, and thinking through Kracauer’s later work and the question of ‘multiple temporalities’. Current book projects include, Lessons From Hell (concerned with popular Indian depictions of punishment), a ‘visual history’ of modern India, and Visual Encounters.
During 2007-09 he was Visiting Crowe professor in Art History at Northwestern University. He gave lectures and seminar presentations at Ohio State University, SALC at the University of Chicago, the University of Southern California, Goldsmiths, NYU, ASU (Phoenix), University of Texas at Austin, Emory, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, New School, Harvard, and Columbia. He gave conference presentations in “Authorizing Inscriptions” at the University of California Davis, in “Decentering Gazes” at the University of Vienna, in “The Aesthetics of Political Transformation in South Asia” at the University of Amsterdam, in the “Indian Cinema Symposium” at the University of Westminster, and in “Painted Photographs” organized by the Alkazi Collection of Photography at SOAS, He participated in a residential seminar “Images that Move” at the School of Advanced Research in Santa Fe, gave a plenary address at the Society for Cultural Anthropology annual meeting at Long Beach, the Annual Lecture of the Transforming Cultures Research Centre at the University of Technology Sydney, and a Nicholson lecture at the University of Chicago.
Pinney made two research trips to India in 2008. In January he visited Mumbai, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Kolkata. In September he visited Delhi (where he lectured at Jamia Millia Islamia University, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, and Jawaharlal Nehru University), Madhya Pradesh, Mumbai and Bangalore (where he gave a Tenth Anniversary Lecture at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society). In 2009 he made three visits to India to research in Madhya Pradesh (Aug-Sept), and to contribute to the Kovalam Literary festival(Oct) and a Pukar conference on Gandhi's Hind Swaraj (Dec). He also gave lectures and conference presentations at Lisbon, Open University,Cologne,Toronto, Copenhagen, Minnesota and Northwestern.
A recent Tehelka interview about his Indian research is available here and one from Outlook available here. Comments on the photographer Gauri Gill's work available here.
His new website makes available an expanding South Asian visual archive for researchers and teachers.
Recent and Upcoming events
May 26 2009 "The Colonial Dromosphere: Speed, Transmission and Prosthesis in Colonial India", plenary lecture at University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies: http://www.fl.ul.pt/agenda/pdf/imperio_britanico.pd
29 May 2009 "Sepia Mutiny: Indian Revolutionaries Stalk the Archive". Keynote lecture at The Visual Archive: The Moving Image and Memory, CRESC, Open University http://www.cresc.ac.uk/events/forum/VisualArchive.html
12 June 2009 "Manifestation and Media: The Aesthetics of Plenitude in central India" in conference on "Trance Mediums and New Media", University of Cologne, Institute for African Studies
6th-8th October Kovalam Literary Festival Kerala, India http://weeksupdate.com/2009/09/2nd-kovalam-literary-festival-kerala.htm. http://www.kovalamlitfest.com".
16th-17th October "Feeling Photography" conference, University of Toronto http://www.torontophotoseminar.org/?page_id=88
22nd October UCL Lunchtime Lecture: "Dhoti, Suit and Trilby: M. K. Gandhi and His Opponents http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lhl/lhlpub_autumn2009/04_221009
November 12th-13th, "Zoom: the anxiety of photography in India", in "Private Eyes" conference, University of Copenhagen http://privateeyes.ikk.ku.dk/participants/
November 18th, Center for South Asian Studies, University of Minnesota, "The Colonial Dromosphere"
20th November 12 noon, Department of Art History, Northwestern University, "Magic and Technology as Historical Variables: Anthropology and Photography from E. B. Tylor to Claude Levi-Strauss".
18-20th December, "Bombs, Knowledge and Amulets: Hind Swaraj and the Shadow of Tilak's 1908 Trial", Pukar and Jnanapravaha, Mumbai "Hind Swaraj a Century After" conference. programme here. Interview in Time Out Mumbai here.
January 5-7th 2010, "‘Empire Follows Art’: A Visual and Material History of Modern India" at "nw Cultural Histories of India Conference, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata. Programme here.
January 18th, "Histories of Photography in South Asia and Tibet“, Interfakultäre Forschungsplattform und Dokumentationsstelle für die Kulturgeschichte Inner- und Südasiens (IFD / CIRDIS), Vienna. Seminarraum 4, Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Spitalgasse 2 (Eingang Garnisongasse 13), Campus, Hof 9, 1090 Wien
February 10th, Cambridge Centre of South Asian Studies "The Colonial Dromosphere"
March 15th, Anthropology Department UCL, "Magic and Technology as Historical Variables: Anthropology and Photography from E.B. Tylor to Claude Lévi-Strauss"
Publications in 2008-09 included:
"Coming Out Better' in Kirsty Ogg (ed.) Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 years of Photography from India, Pakistan and BangladeshWhitechapel Art Gallery, 2009.
"Iatrogenic Religion and Culture" in Raminder Kaur and William Mazzarella eds. Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction Indiana, 2009
"sic transit gloria mundi" in Peter Abrahams: Double-Space, London, Eagle Gallery. See http://www.peterabrahams.eu/
"The Politics of Popular Images: From Cow Protection to M.K. Gandhi , 1890-1950",in Arvind Rajagopal (ed.) The Indian Public Sphere: Readings in Media History" Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2009, pp. 65-86 (edited excerpt from Photos of the Gods).
Commentary in James Elkins and David Morgan (eds.) Re-enchantment Routledge, New York, 2008.
The Coming of Photography in India (London: British Library & Delhi: Oxford University Press). ISBN 978-0-7123-4972-7 (review here).
“The Prosthetic Eye: Photography as Cure and Poison” in Matthew Engelke ed. The Objects of Evidence: Anthropological Approaches to the Production of Knowledge special issue of Journal of the Royal Anthropological Instititute, 14(s1), pp. s-33-46.
“Accidental Ramdevji” in Jyotindra Jain (ed.) India’s Popular Culture: Iconic Images and Fluid Spaces. Mumbai ISBN: 978-8185026817
‘Colonialism and Culture’ in Tony Bennett and John Frow eds. A Handbook of Cultural Analysis. Pp. 382-405 London: Sage ISBN: 978-0-7619-4229-0
Current PhD Students
He is keen to work with doctoral candidates on a range of issues including South Asia, visual culture, and postcolonialism.
Konstantinos Kalantzis
Visualizing Identity on the Margins of Europe: Photography and the Geographies of Imagination in contemporary Sphakia, Crete
Rafael Schacter
Graffiti and Public Space in Madrid
More images of Holi (1994) and Rang Panchmi (2006)
Recent PhD Students
Rodney Reynolds
Unimagined Community: Material Culture and National Identity in the Republic of Panama. See Seminar: International Dialogues: co-presence online.
Hoi-Yan YauSearch for Individual Agency: the Use of Japanese Adult Videos in Taiwan
Shaila Bhatti
Exhibiting and Viewing Culture, Curiosities and the Nation at the Lahore Museum
Tracey Black
Maithil Painting: The Circulation of Images
Alex Aisher
Socio-Religious Practice and Forest landscape Ecology in Arunachal Pradesh
Chris Wright
Photography and Memory in the Solomon Islands
Iban Ayesta
Embodiment in Fin de Millenium Berlin
Raminder Kaur Kahlon (SOAS)
Artwork, religious festivals and nationalism in Western India
Nayanika Mookherjee (SOAS)
A Lot of History: Public Memories, Sexual Violence and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971
Helle Bundgaard(SOAS)
Indian Art Worlds in Contention. Local, Regional and National Discourses on Orissan Patta Paintings
Khalid Manzoor Basra(SOAS)
A Garland of Razors: Talwandi Gharana of Lahore
Useful South Asia links
http://www.tasveerghar.net
http://www.sarai.net/
http://www.sahmat.org/intropage.html
http://www.greencardamom.net/index.php
http://www.sepia.org
http://www.walshgallery.com/
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/
http://tibet.prm.ox.ac.uk/
http://www.alif-india.com/popart/
Useful Visual Culture links http://www.visualanthropology.net/
Visual Anthropology Review http://people.virginia.edu/~ds8s/VAR/
last modified by Christopher Pinney, 15 January 2010
