A vintage camera museum in Gurgaon
showcases rare cameras and pictures
No tickets are required to enter
this museum; nor do metal detectors or grim-looking security guards greet you.
Instead, Aditya Arya walks out to receive you like an old friend, escorts you
to the basement of his house, in Gurgaon’s upmarket DLF Phase III, and welcomes
you to his pet project — the vintage camera museum.
The large, well-lit room almost
transports you to India of the ’40s. The walls of the temperature-controlled
museum are adorned with rare pictures taken by Kulwant Roy, an independent
photojournalist who worked closely with Indian politicians. And there are rows
and rows of cameras, more than 300 of them, dating from the early 19th century
studio specimens such as the 1860s wooden Thornton-Pickard to more recent Canon
and Nikon SLRs and DSLRs. Arya also has a considerable collection of rare
camera films/rolls, which he has procured from across the world, and India’s first
3D photographs, including a picture of young turbaned boys at the Golden
Temple, Amritsar. To be viewed on a simple, light, wooden device called the
Stereoscope, these pre-Independence pictures offer insights into the lives of
Indians at the time, such as a photo of a group of weavers using the handloom.
“Many people who write on
photography seldom know the mechanics of photography. But how can one know the
art without knowing the craft,” says Arya, as he points towards a
black-and-white photograph of Jawaharlal Nehru with Jacqueline Kennedy, taken
when the Kennedys visited India in 1962. “Compare that picture with portrait
photographs taken in modern times,” he asks. As we try to spot the difference,
he walks over to one of the cupboards and takes out a camera. “This is a
Yashica Mat with a 120 mm twin lens reflex,” he says, as he shows us an archaic
box-shaped black camera. “This used to be a favourite among the
photojournalists of the time, as it was easy to carry. But look at the way it
works,” he says, demonstrating how to hold the camera near the chest and peer
through the viewfinder on top. “Today, we take pictures by holding the camera
at the eye-level; and that is why the angle of the picture changes,” he
explains, showing us the same Nehru-Kennedy picture and comparing it with Roy’s
more recent work.
What started as a collection of old
photos passed on by a family friend has become a haunting obsession for Arya,
who is also a trustee of the India Photo Archive Foundation. “I have been
lugging around the old yellow crates for years. They contain thousands of
Roy’s photographs and his other memorabilia. I haven’t sorted through even half
of them,” he explains, adding that the motivation for the museum, which he
began setting up in 2008, came from that. He hires interns to work in the
museum, but does most of the work himself or with the help of his son. Arya’s
collection of Roy’s works documents many of India’s historic moments. For
example, a photograph of Jawaharlal Nehru, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Sardar
Patel arriving for the 1945 Shimla conference on a hand-drawn carriage, is one
of the rarer ones.
Arya says he takes visitors only by
appointment because he likes to show them around himself. “There are people who
find this place very dry, and there are those who sit around for hours, looking
through the photographs, reading up on the cameras.
I want this place to be a home for
the latter,” he says.
IEEYE 120805
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