A day for keepers of the past

Hyderabad: Well-known photographer and archivist Aditya Arya, in association with Deccan Chronicle, held a photo-archiving workshop on Tuesday stressing on the methods of preserving decades-old photographs.

One of the participants was Uma Deen Dayal, daughter-in-law of the grandson of Raja Deen Dayal, the court photographer to Nizam Mahbub Ali Khan. Her family has thousands of photographs taken over more than a 100 years.

“Raja Deen Dayal himself had taken about 30,000 photographs,” said Deendayal. Madan Vyas of Byas Photo Studio had received a certificate as the ‘Shahi photographer’ from the Nizams.
Interestingly, the Deen Dayal and Vyas families were in competition in that era.

“There was probably a gap during which the Deen Dayals were a little inactive and our family capitalised,” said Vyas. He currently runs Byas Foto World in Himayathnagar. The name is so because the Nizams pronounced Vyas as Byas.

Among the participants was young realtor Rajnikant Babjee, who has a vast collection of paintings and two out of 14 volumes of the book — People of India, which had been commissioned by the British government. The books contain original photographs of natives.

Babjee calls himself an amateur photographer but his father was an artist. “Several generations of our family have lived in Hyderabad, but were not specifically into photography. A part of my collection was passed on to me by my father who also had an interest in collecting. I just nurtured the same interest,” he said.

He has collected photographs from many sources including secondhand sellers and auctions. Another participant whose family wasn’t specifically into photography was V. Kumar, member of the AP Labour Welfare Board.

His sister’s father-in-law was into film distribution and distributed Dev Anand’s films. He has old photographs of the evergreen star. Also among his collection are photographs of Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy and Jawaharlal Nehru standing in an open top Amber car on Kings Way (now RP Road in Secunderabad).

The Nizam’s era is over, but the history of the city remains captured in their photographs making them keepers of the past. Summing up the motive of the workshop, Arya said, “Lots of people who had priceless photographs from the olden times just gave them away to scrap collectors.

These are pieces of history that need to preserved. If you have such collections of old photographs, you are a visual historian. You can preserve them and be a custodian of history or just pretend to be busy and throw them away.”

Arya himself found rare negatives in several boxes left to him by the famous photographer Kulwant Roy. He has since set up the India Photo Archive Foundation to archive old photographs.
The workshop participants also brought some of the oldest and rarest photographs from their collections.

Arya also spoke at length about old cameras and flashlights. While most aren’t aware that such cameras and explosive flashes existed, one participant, Balakrishna Mehta, whose family has been involved in the photography business for generations, said that he still possessed antique instruments. 

Next: Archiving a tedious process, says Aditya

Archiving a tedious process, says Aditya

Hyderabad: Preservation and archiving of photographs are not just about tucking them away in large albums. Photographer and archivist Aditya Arya says the archiving involves ensuring permanence of the original photograph and also making copies of them. It is a long and tedious process that requires use of latest technology.

Original photographs can be scanned using flat bed scanners to produce digital copies. Arya says he prefers hard disk drives in a RAID system. It involves distribution of date in multiple disks to improve performance.

However, preservation of the originals is far more important. Degradation of photographs can occur due to humidity and acidity due to air pollution. Archive rooms should specifically be sealed off and humidity controlled with dehumidifiers.

“I use a humidity meter which gives a reading of humidity in the room. Ideal humidity is less than 45 per cent. There are dehumidifiers by various manufacturers to control humidity in the archive room,” Arya said.

On most occasions old photographs are pasted on cardboard supports so that they are not torn. However, this can actually lead to degradation of the photograph. “It is always the support material that causes the problem.

The acidity from the support paper degrades the photograph,” Arya explains. The supporting paper should not be acidic. PH pens and pencils are available to check the acidity of the paper.

“There are acid free mount boards and archival photo corners which are best for use. But if there are lot of photographs, polyester covers are the better choice,” he says.

Even while digitising, the first copy of the original in digital form should be an exact copy and changes can be made in later copies.