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At the age of just 21 Muspratt set up her first business in Swanage in 1926. Portraits of families, couples and children were her primary source of income but more progressive images followed as her skills developed into a recognisable and unmistakably modern style. Her early work includes an image of an unemployed miner which perfectly captures the melancholic atmosphere of the Depression era. Although taken in the studio, this image is an early indication of her later ventures into documentary photography and the immense social conviction and compassion for others that informed her later portraits.

In 1932, the painter Francis Newberry (a friend of the Muspratt family) introduced Muspratt to the young widow Lettice Ramsey. This meeting marked a turning point in her career as the two women formed a business partnership that had a significant impact on Muspratt’s life. Ramsey’s late husband, the philosopher and mathematician Frank Ramsey, had been part of Cambridge’s lively intellectual circles, which proved to be a valuable social connection for Muspratt.

In turn, Muspratt encouraged Ramsey to undergo the necessary training in photography and together they formally established their partnership as ‘Ramsey & Muspratt’ in 1932. While Ramsey concentrated on portraits of members of the Bloomsbury Group such as Roger Fry and Julian Bell, Muspratt captured emerging academics from Cambridge, including the writer C. P Snow and the influential neuropsychologist Oliver Zangwill.

During this period, Muspratt’s creativity flourished and the influence of Man Ray can be seen in her experiments in surrealist techniques, in particular solarisation, a technique which creates silvery outlines and a bleached effect by overexposing the negative. A dramatic set of portraits of the theatrical family the Spencer Watsons was undoubtedly Muspratt’s highest achievement of this technique, while a similar effect can be seen in her images of surrealist artist Eileen Agar whom she photographed in the summer of 1935, along with non-solarised images of her lover Paul Nash.

As Muspratt continued to socialise in Cambridge left wing academic circles she became increasingly influenced by their politics. In 1936 she embarked on a photographic tour of the Soviet Union, taking confrontational photographs of its citizens. She formed an overwhelmingly positive impression of the Soviet system and the state’s collective achievements in urban, agricultural and technological development. She was also impressed by the variety of roles that were open to women and her photographs of young female farmworkers in Kiev communicate the sense of empowerment she felt during her time in the Soviet Union.

Upon her return to the UK, she joined the Communist Party, and in 1937 married fellow communist Jack Dunman. Their commitment to their ideals led to an agreement that Muspratt was to be the main breadwinner in the family. She opened a second Ramsay & Muspratt studio in her new home Oxford, close to the university where she found many of her subjects. The partnership between the two women dissolved, leaving Muspratt with the Oxford studio but the two remained lifelong friends. Although she took fewer experimental photographs, her portrait photographs continued to reflect her desire to create honest and direct representations of her sitters.

Helen Muspratt: Photographer
A De’Longhi Print Room exhibition
9 March – 8 May 2016

The exhibition in the De’Longhi Print Room at Pallant House Gallery is free to enter and runs from 9 March - 8 May 2016.

A new monograph Face: Shape and Angle by Jessica Sutcliffe, Helen Muspratt’s daughter and published by Manchester University Press will be on sale in the Pallant Bookshop, priced £30.

Image: Helen Muspratt, Paul Nash, 1935 © The Estate of the Artist

A history, and a biography, Clark Worswick's  ArtMachine: A Reinvention of Photography, 1959-1999 is an insiders view of emergent the photography world of the last quadrant of the 20th century.  It has been written by a practicing photographer, who was also the founding photography curator of the oldest museum in America, and who also wrote the first books on Asian classical photography.

In his introduction to this book, the author wrote, “I began taking photographs and tried to learn the history of a neglected, beaten down, battered medium few people took seriously in the art world. I wandered a world barren of respect during decades of struggle for photography.” 

“In 1959, on the planet earth, there was not a single dealer who represented a single photographer's work, because photography was not an art.”

This is also a book about love and dangerous travel, and the heroic reinvention of photography in the art world.

To date, few books have appeared on the texts of a working photographer’s life immersed in projects that cross years, then decades.   Fewer books still exist seen from the point of view of a historian/collector, who wrote the first books on the classical photography of India, China, and Japan. 

ArtMachine: A Reinvention of Photography is the story of the long war for photography’s acceptance during the last decades of the 20th century.  It was also a historic moment, and a time never to be repeated, when you could buy fabulous pictures that no one anywhere ... knew anything about.   

Clark Worswick (1940-) was born in Berkeley, California.  Abandoning America when he was eighteen years old, for years he travelled between India and Europe. Staying in Maharajas’ palaces, or in indigent pilgrims’ shelters he took photographs, and collected Indian antiquities.  In the first wave of young westerners to pass though the Iranian and Afghan deserts, his first book of dangerous travel, The Orchid House: Art Smuggling and Appointments in India and Afghanistan, recounts seldom described travels in far Asia.

The second book in this series titled ArtMachine: A Reinvention of Photography  deals with photography’s hard fought acceptance, as one of the most dynamic and important adjuncts to the  increasingly internationalized art world.

In the mid-1960’s the book takes up Worswick’s three year photographic survey titled Manufacturing the Future: California, which documented an emergent world- wide culture that during the next half century, would subsume the world.  In the late 1960’s he made the first country wide document of Ethiopia, and lived to tell the tale of making the first photographs of the interior of the Danakil Desert, the most dangerous place on earth. 

Worswick’s exhibitions and books on 19th century photography of India, China, Japan and the Middle East have identified scores of non-European artists working in the medium. During 1959 he began collecting 19th century photographs in Calcutta.  He later became the First Research Fellow in Film and Photography at Harvard University. 

His books have been named "Best of the Year" by:  The NY Times, The London Times, The Washington Post, The Sunday Times, Newsweek and Time Magazine. 

Softcover edition:  Baker & Taylor, Ingram, Amazon in Europe and America.  E-book version:  Amazon, Apple I-POD, Barnes & Nobel. 

The programme for the 14th Image and Research conference has been published and is available here: Imatge_Recerca_programa_ENG.pdf. Registration can be done here. 

The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts presents an exhibition of photographic works by the world-renowned photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. Henri Cartier-Bresson: PARIS features 83 images captured between 1929 and 1985, many of which are being shown in the UK for the first time, providing an extraordinary insight into the streets of the city and the lives of its people. Opening concurrently with Alberto Giacometti: A Line through Time on the 23 April 2016, the two exhibitions complement one another and explore the rich artistic legacy of the era, bringing together two of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. Cartier-Bresson acknowledged Giacometti to be his favourite artist, and included in the exhibition will be his iconic portrait of Giacometti alone on a rain-drenched Paris street.

Known predominantly as a photographer of the street, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s images capture the dynamism of contemporary life and this exhibition explores one of his most enduring subjects – Paris.  Exquisite black and white images record the people, places and activity of the city finding the unusual, the humorous, the poignant and the often marvellous in the ordinary and everyday.

Capturing and recording moments of real life was central to Cartier-Bresson’s work.  From the butchers hauling carcasses in the market of Les Halles, to the school children looking from the top of Notre-Dame cathedral, he found beauty in mundane subjects.  Documenting the politically turbulent times in which he lived, from the Rue St-Honoré in the year of the French liberation, to a wall of faces at the funeral of the victims of the 1962 Charonne massacre, he engaged equally with the harsh realities of the city and it’s past.  He wrote: ‘I kept walking the streets, high-strung, and eager to snap scenes of convincing reality, but mainly I wanted to capture the quintessence of the phenomenon in a single image. Photographing, for me, is instant drawing, and the secret is to forget you are carrying a camera …’

Revolutionising the medium of photography with his distaste for flash and cropping techniques, Cartier-Bresson was a pioneer of modern photography and changed the way photographers made work over the following decades. Discovering the 35mm Leica camera in the 1930’s, Cartier-Bresson found the perfect tool for his own exploration. Referring to his technique as ‘sketching’ he would roam the streets with his hand held camera, recording the city and finding the extraordinary in the everyday.

Shown in the UK for the first time, this exhibition is organised by Magnum Photos and the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson. It runs from 23 April – 29 August 2016.

Henri Cartier-Bresson: PARIS
23 April 2016 – 29 August 2016
£7 / £6 concessions
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ
www.scva.ac.uk, 01603 593199, scva@uea.ac.uk

Image: Street scene. 1954 © Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos

In celebration of its 170th anniversary Leeds College of Art has announced its next exhibition of work: photographer Ralph Wallis, entitled Is this seat taken?... opening at a special preview evening on 24 March, 5pm-7pm at the College’s Vernon Street building.

Is this seat taken? captures images of Leeds City Centre in the 1950s. The Headrow, the Queens Hotel and Leeds City Varieties are amongst the works as well as alumni of the College, including a life sized image of the late, legendary Leeds Jazz musician, Ed O’Donnell.

Guest-curator and Leeds College of Art alumna, Bianca Wallis-Salmon, has researched the life and work of her great-uncle, Ralph Wallis and has used his work to produce an autobiographical photobook which will be launched at the preview event 24 March 5pm-7pm. Visitors at the preview can also take a tour of the College’s black-and-white photography darkrooms, all are welcome to this free event and no booking is required.

Ralph Wallis, he is a lesser-known but prolific photographer, who took up the camera in the 1950s. Ralph began his career working as a press photographer for the Yorkshire Evening Post, alongside childhood friend Peter O’Toole. Ralph worked as a technician then Lecturer in Charge of Photography at Leeds College of Art in the early 60s, and set up darkrooms to provide photographic facilities for students. Leeds-born Ralph aged 83 years of age now resides in Canada.

Ralph Wallis comments: 'Similar to Edna Lumb I found Leeds, with all its soot covered buildings and incredible street children of all shapes and sizes, just screaming out to be photographed. As in those dark days, which I loved as a young photographer, Leeds was made for us.' 

Bianca Wallis-Salmon said: 'Ralph has a certain style, his charm and charisma shining through with every click of the shutter. His images have a way of transporting your imagination; I sometimes feel I could be looking at a still from Brief Encounter. I became enchanted by the bold emotion of the photographs, and felt they needed to be seen. So I embarked on producing this publication, a visual autobiography that showcases his iconic images and also tells the story of his life. I feel very proud to have finally brought Ralph’s work into the open and hope people will be equally enamoured with our story.  

Leeds College of Art has been a hugely significant part of my families past, present and future. And I hope that in turn we have played our part in contributing to the legacy of creativity that thrives within its walls.'

See more here.

Japanese publisher Akaaka Art Publishing Inc. has published a facsimile of W H F Talbot's The Pencil of Nature with essays by Naoya Hatakeyama, Michael Gray, Masaru Aoyama, Tadashi Kanai and Giuseppe Penone.

Masarou Aoyama’s publication presents the first full Japanese translation of the iconic yet widely forgotten published works by photographic pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature. Originally published in 1844, William Henry Fox Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature was the first commercially published book illustrated with photographs. The publication contained twenty four plates, including a brief text for each image which introduced and described the history and process of Talbot’s new photogenic drawing process. This publication reproduces Talbot’s original publication, including a full Japanese translation within the new design.

All text included within the publication available only in Japanese

See more here: http://www.akaaka.com/publishing/books/bk-pencil-of-nature.html or buy here from an English-language website here for £27.25 plus shipping.

The Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University is seeking to appoint a Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow in any area of photographic history. The PHRC is known for its world leading research in social and cultural histories of photography (see http://www.dmu.ac.uk/research/research-faculties-and-institutes/art-design-humanities/phrc/photographic-history-research-centre-phrc.aspx). You will complement existing strengths within the PHRC and will open up individual avenues of research. For more information please see the PHRC homepage. 

DMU offers unique teaching of social and cultural photographic history at the BA level in History and at the MA level in Photographic History. The PHRC has a thriving doctoral student cohort, and ongoing collaborations with museum and library partners. You will be expected to engage with teaching and supervision at all levels, as well as curriculum development, outreach to institutional partners and research planning in the PHRC. An ability to work collegially within and across departments at DMU is essential. 

We welcome applications from candidates with a PhD or equivalent, in any relevant field. You should have a proven track record of significant international publication, excellent teaching skills and demonstrate a willingness to engage with current debates in photographic history. You should demonstrate a clear vision for future research, academic citizenship and transformational scholarship.

Sotheby's upcoming auction of Travel, Atlases, Maps and Natural History on 28 April 2016 includes a number of lots of photography. Photograph highlights include:

• Lot 53 A massive panorama of Moscow (1867), 16-parts, with a distinguished provenance
• Lot 60 An album of photographs of New Caledonia by Allan Hughan (c.1872-79)
• Lot 79. A fine copy of Francis Frith’s “Egypt, Sinai and Jerusalem” (c.1858), which has been owned by the same noble family since new.
• Lot 84. Jerusalem and the Holy Land in Photographs: 1850-c.1930. A magnificent collection of c.1,700 photographs
• Lots 113-117, 119, 122 and 127 Photographs of China, Mongolia, India and Korea

The catalogue can be viewed here. 

The National Media Museum is looking for a creative Associate Curator to join the team in this exciting new role.  Working across the museum’s internationally significant collections of photography, film and television, the Associate Curator of Science and Technology will lead the museum’s contemporary collecting efforts, build partnerships with industry and universities, and curate thought-provoking exhibitions and events for different audiences. 

The successful candidate will have demonstrable knowledge of the relevant subject areas gained through post graduate study and/or strong experience in a similar role. Please note it is essential that candidates have experience in collections management and in developing events or exhibitions relating to science and technology.

Candidate Profile

Demonstrable experience of the following:

• Collections management practice including experience of handling and assessing objects
• Best practice in acquisition and loans processes
• Detailed cataloguing working to professional standards
• Developing exhibitions, websites, events or publications relating to science and technology
• Working with audience groups to increase access to collections and broaden reach
• Working with subject specialists to research and deliver accurate, engaging content for non-specialist target audiences
• Relevant research of the history and contemporary practice of the science and technology of light and sound
• Effectively working in a team, supporting colleagues and managing stakeholders
• Supporting grant applications and working with sponsors
• Budget management and supervisory/management of volunteers, interns or employees.

Skills, Knowledge and Relevant Qualifications

• Strong knowledge of history and contemporary practice of the science and technology of light and sound, gained through postgraduate study in a relevant field or equivalent knowledge gained through experience
• Excellent research skills and ability to originate ideas and research and develop accurate and engaging content within tight deadlines. This might be represented by a Masters degree in a relevant discipline or equivalent knowledge gained through experience, etc.
• Strong oral and written communication skills for a range of non-specialist and specialist audiences and ability to liaise with external specialists/organisations
• Good project development and research skills to produce world-class displays and events whilst effectively managing resources
• Proven ability to work effectively on more than one project / work area simultaneously, managing different programmes to achieve high quality results and co-ordinating with a range of stakeholders
• An understanding of delivering visitor-focused exhibitions and events to museum visitors
• Good interpersonal and networking skills for collaboration internally and with external peers and stakeholders
• Excellent imagination and creativity, encouraging and supporting creativity and innovation and work of the highest quality from colleagues, students, interns etc.
• Ability to multi-task, organise and prioritise effectively, often working to deadlines in pressured environments

Closing date:      30 March

Interviews:          w/c 18 April

More details and to apply click here

We are happy to announce that registration is now open for the upcoming PMWG 2016 Interim Meeting to be held at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 21-24 September 2016.
 
The theme of the meeting is: Uniques & Multiples. Please follow the link below to find all details related to the meeting. The Technical Committee looks forward to your participation.
 
Register here: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/icom-cc.pmwg
 
The email address for questions related to the conference is: icom-cc.pmwg.2016@rijksmuseum.nl
 
Key dates to remember:
15 March 2016: Announcement of programme, Registration opens
21-22 September 2016: Workshops and tours
23-24 September 2016: Interim meeting

With major auctions scheduled for 20 May and 8 June - important photographs from daguerreotypes by De Prangey to modern Russian and international work - MacDougall’s is looking for photography auction specialists and assistants for this exciting new department; we're NOT looking for a photographer, but an expert on photographs for auction. London based MacDougall’s is one of the three largest auction houses in the world for Russian art and is now expanding into other areas.

To discuss these opportunities in strictest confidence please write with your CV to personnel@macdougallauction.com

See more here.

The National Media Museums holds extensive and internationally significant library and archive collections on the history of photography, film and television.  We are looking for an experienced library and archive professional to create and implement a plan to catalogue and enable access to these collections.  Working within the museum’s collections team, and with archivists and librarians from across the Science Museum Group, the post-holder will have the scope to make a major impact on the museum and public access to its collections.

Purpose of the Job

Lead a project to establish the necessary systems for the professional management of archive and library collections at the museum, and a sustainable operational model for their access by researchers and the public.

Manage, develop and make accessible, in line with professional standards, the internationally significant library and archive collections of the National Media Museum, and managing the Archives and Library team, including the operation of the Insight research facility.

Key Deliverables/Accountabilities

1. Lead the implementation of professional archive and library management systems at the Museum to provide improved access to all library and archive collections
2. Instigate and prioritise cataloguing projects to ensure the collections are effectively managed and made accessible to staff and the public.
3. Develop and implement a sustainable model for access to the museum’s collections through the Insight research centre.
4. Help foster object based knowledge and research of the highest calibre to further expertise within the fields covered by the Museum’s collection.
5. Maintain a strong research profile and help advise stakeholders and enquirers, both internal and external, on archival and library collections and associated research.
6. Maintain an up-to-date understanding of the subjects represented in the museum’s collections in order to be able to contextualise changes in practice and interpretation in accordance with our collection
7. Ensure the collections in the post holder’s care are developed, catalogued/documented, appropriately managed, made accessible and displayed in a way that is consistent with the museum’s priorities, policies and cultural programme
8. Promote a culture of high performance. Ensure that all direct reports have SMART objectives set and where appropriate, career development plans in place. Act swiftly and appropriately to deal with underperformance
9. Budget Management. Using appropriate delegation, effectively manage or oversee staff to administer budgets with an acceptable level of professionalism and in accordance with good management practices and in particular SMG policy and procedure, handling operational budgets
10. Responsible for strategic management of Insight
11. Develop content for the museum’s outputs relating to the library and archive collections
12. Represent the museum on external specialist groups
13. Represent the museum on relevant SMG committees (e.g. Library and Archives group)
14. Take care of your personal health and safety and that of others and report any health and safety concerns. Ensure proactive compliance with Science Museum Group H&S Policies, including risk assessments and implementing safe systems of work

Working Relationships and Contacts

• Head of Collections and Exhibitions – line manager
• Professional archive and library colleagues across SMG – peer support and sharing best practice
• Collections Team at Bradford – knowledge of the collections
• Collections and Corporate Information Team (CCI) across SMG – good practice in documentation
• Collections Care and Conservation Team (CCC) across SMG – good practice in collections care and conservation
• Volunteer coordinator – management of volunteers
• Senior Exhibitions Manager – use of archive and library collections in exhibition and display

• Other museums, universities, archive institutions, libraries, cultural institutions, specialist societies and professional bodies

Please note this is a fixed term contract for 2 years.

Closing date: 28 March

Interviews: w/c 18 April

See more and apply here: https://vacancies.nmsi.ac.uk/VacancyDetails.aspx?FromSearch=True&MenuID=6Dqy3cKIDOg=&VacancyID=1275

Photography is at the heart of the art world. With so many dedicated art fairs, auctions, festivals, exhibitions, collections and prizes, photography is also at the core of increasingly diverse contemporary art practices. Today, photography collections and exhibitions reach back to historical and modernist traditions and experiments, and forward toward the possibilities of digital technologies and visual communication on the Web.

This course looks at photography as art from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. It deals with major artistic movements alongside thematic explorations. Throughout, the course explores the changing markets for photography from the perspectives of curators, dealers, collectors and artists. Including sessions on various integral aspects of the market, it offers an expansive view of photography’s movement from the margins to the centre of the art world through the last century, and considers its place in the global contemporary art market today.

Students learn through lectures and discussions, visits to public, private and commercial collections and exhibitions, and to artists’ studios. Guest speakers include leading market experts, artists and curators. For practitioners and enthusiasts, the course has a dedicated Instagram feed and a historical techniques workshop where we will make our own tin-types.

See more here: http://www.sothebysinstitute.com/london/summer-study/art-photography-and-its-markets/

Hello. Please help me identify this pleasant elderly gentleman, albumen print by Maull and Polyblank.

Thanks, David

Hello. I am searching for information about this albumen photo. Does anyone recognize the location of this photo? It is a large albumen print, appears to be a coal station? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Best, David

2016 marks 175 years since the first recorded photograph, a daguerreotype, was taken in Barber's studio in Bromley House Library,Nottingham.

We would like to mount an exhibition celebrating Victorian photography in our picture gallery, in September and October this year. Unfortunately the Science museum want to charge a huge amount for each jpeg and the V and A even more.

Is anyone aware of a more generous institution that would allow us to print and exhibit some good quality images by Victorian photographers for a reasonable sum? The exhibition will be open to members and the public at no charge.

Last year we opened the Pauline Heathcote Archive, her notes used in her publications on the history of photography. In the studio we have an antique large plate studio camera on a stand with a reproduction backdrop and in the dark room a collection of antique and vintage cameras and dark room equipment as well as Pauline Heathcote's Archive.

For more information on the Bromley House Studio go to www.bromleyhouse.org  > about us > our history > photographic studio.

For the contents of the archive go to www.bromleyhouse.org > about us > our history > Pauline Heathcote Archive.

This conference is designed to celebrate the potential, and the actuality, of the new Science Museum Group's (SMG) research culture. In particular, it marks the opening of the Dana Research Centre and Library, a new home for research in South Kensington. The conference will address how research in science museums, and with their support, can transform not just museums but how research is done in universities.

We will explore this question through the Museum’s interconnected research meta-themes:

• The public culture of STEMM (including public history of science, and the study of audiences and science media in the present and the past).
• STEMM and the Arts (how science and technology interact with the arts – including photography, music and literature)
• The material culture of STEMM (how we can most effectively study objects in museum collections, paying proper attention to their materiality; how may we best conserve the material – and immaterial – culture of STEMM).

Amongst the speakers and topics of interest to BPH readers are: 

• Phillip Roberts, University of York and National Media Museum, ‘The Projection Microscope, magic lantern entertainments and the scientific instrument trade’

and a session on Friday, 1 April, on researching photography which consists of: 

• Elizabeth Edwards, De Montfort University and Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, ‘Location, Location: Placing Collections and Shaping Histories’
• Ben Burbridge, Sussex University, ‘Which Photography? Revelations: Experiments in Photography as Cautionary Tale’
• Colin Harding, National Media Museum, ‘The Face of Battle: The Colour Photography of Percy Hennell’
• Noeme Santana, Royal Holloway, University of London, ‘Photography as a business practice in the civil engineering industry’

Details and the cost are here: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/about-us/collections-and-research/news-and-events/dana-conference

To mark the 97th anniversary of pioneer photographer Olive Edis' tour of Europe documenting the work of the British women's services in the First World War, and in celebration of Women's History Month, Cromer Museum will be sharing extracts from her journal over the next few weeks on their project blog. Looking forward to following Liz Elmore's work as she continues to research the Edis archive.

It's been a busy two months since leaving the NPG. I'm delighted to have been awarded the 2016 Josef Breitenbach Research Fellowship at the Center for Creative Photography, Arizona. My research will examine Breitenbach's work as part of a wider study of the history of photography education in the US in the post-war period. I'm really looking forward to the months ahead focusing on this new research.

Professor Sunil Khilnani returns with Incarnations. In the first programme he profiles the pioneering photographer Lala Deen Dayal. Born in 1855, Lala Deen Dayal would go on to become the court photographer for the fabulously wealthy sixth Nizam of Hyderabad, who dubbed him the "bold warrior of photography".

Earlier in his career, his images of the historic monuments and architecture of India had become a sensation, and a means by which Indian landmarks could be appreciated in the West. Over subsequent decades, Deen Dayal's carefully arranged portraits would open a window on a second aspect of a splendid, idealized India: the lifestyles of the late nineteenth-century elite. Though India had at this high point of the Raj become the world's leading stage for status display, which often involved the shooting of tigers, a person's status wasn't quite fixed unless the moment itself was shot - ideally by Deen Dayal himself.

"Deen Dayal captured a particular moment of elite indulgence and excess," says Sunil Khilnani. "Just before it was swept away."

Like many successful artists, before him and since, Deen Dayal became adept at selling his patrons the images of themselves they most wanted to see, and share. And his story might be simply a portrait of an artist as a public relations man, if his artistry wasn't so compelling and historically revealing.

Without him, we wouldn't understand so powerfully the moment when India became the world's exotic, wondrous playground for the wealthy, before the modern world got in the way.

Featuring interviews with artist Dayanita Singh and art historian Deborah Hutton.

Listen on the BBC iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07142ll#play