Pulga before 1895

Frederick Saint John Gore captured this photographic print of Pulga, a village in India, sometime between 1857 and 1903. Gore, a British photographer, documented landscapes during a time when the British Empire exerted significant colonial influence over India. The image invites us to reflect on the complex interplay between identity, place, and power. It’s impossible to separate images like this from the history of colonialism. Who gets to represent whom? What stories are told, and whose are left out? The very act of photographing Pulga situates the village within a Western gaze, shaping its perception through a colonial lens. Consider the absence of individual stories from the village. Instead, we have a romanticized landscape, absent of complex narratives of the locals. The emotional pull of the photograph lies in this tension—between the aesthetic beauty of the scene and the historical weight of its colonial context. It prompts us to question whose perspectives are privileged and whose are marginalized.