Sookh-Vilas Palace Garden 1880 - 1890

Editor: Lala Deen Dayal’s photograph, Sookh-Vilas Palace Garden, dating from the 1880s-1890s, captures a quiet, tranquil scene. I’m really struck by the composition, all those horizontal lines from the path to the benches – it feels very ordered. What do you make of it? Curator: That order is interesting, isn’t it? We see this photograph within a larger history of British colonialism in India, and the commission of Lala Deen Dayal as court photographer to several ruling houses. This carefully arranged garden, with its Western-style benches, speaks to an adoption, or perhaps an imposition, of British aesthetic sensibilities onto the Indian landscape. Editor: Imposition, really? That seems like a strong word. Curator: Well, consider the socio-political context. Photography at this time became a tool for documenting and representing the colonized world. Images like this, circulating back in Britain, would have reinforced ideas about control and the transformation of the “exotic” East into something more familiar, something ‘civilized’ for a British audience. Editor: So, it’s not just a picture of a pretty garden. It’s part of a larger…project? Curator: Exactly. Think about the role of palaces, the commission, the intended audience…how these aspects shape the very act of looking and interpreting the photograph. This ordered scene becomes a statement about power. Who benefits from the idea of "civilizing"? Whose perspective are we seeing the garden through? Editor: That's really made me reconsider how I see this photo. I was focusing on the surface level serenity. Curator: And that’s perfectly valid. But considering the historical context and the socio-political elements embedded within changes everything. Now it's about unpicking those embedded complexities to help us see how constructed the very idea of “serenity” really is in this image. Editor: Thanks, that’s a very useful way to view this photograph and to challenge my first assumptions about it.