Dear friends of Tasveer Ghar
Greetings of the festive season. As we say goodbye to 2025 and ring in 2026 – a year in which we complete 20 years since we started – we take a moment to reflect on what a journey we have been on, made all the more meaningful and productive because of the involvement of so many along the way. We began this journey in 2006 with a commitment to build a “trans-national virtual home for collecting, digitizing, and documenting various materials produced by South Asia’s exciting popular visual sphere including posters, calendar art, pilgrimage maps and paraphernalia, cinema hoardings, advertisements, and other forms of street and bazaar art.” Over the past two decades, over 60 authors and collectors have contributed to our virtual home with their ideas and their work, not to mention their collections, and we remain so appreciative for their time and thoughts.
As we ring out 2025, we draw attention to some highlights from the past year.
Visual essays we published :
· H.N. Golibar and Gujarati Pulp Fiction Covers
Author: Rakesh Khanna, 09 Jan. 2025
https://tasveergharindia.net/
· Kovilpatti: the Town that Papered India
Author: Stephen Inglis, 21 Aug. 2025
https://tasveergharindia.net/
· Tubercular Sublime: The Art of Indian TB Seals
Author: Projit Bihari Mukharji, 12 Sep. 2025
https://tasveergharindia.net/
Our long collaboration with Priya Paul was featured in From dust to digital: The quest to preserve India’s bazaar art. https://scroll.in/magazine/
In September 2025, Yousuf Saeed offered a curated walk-through of Priya’s personal archive in collaboration with the Delhi Art Gallery as part of its “City as Museum series” on which you can find more here: https://www.tasveergharindia.
Our archive also inspired and has been featured in two important shows, one in India and the other in the U.S. about to start in a month.
1. Divine Color: Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal, an exhibition of lithographs from 19th-century Calcutta being held at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, USA. Tasveer Ghar has collaborated with MFA to curate a few wall-sized collages of 20th-century popular images from its archive. January 31–May 31, 2026. See https://www.mfa.org/
2. Ticket Tika Chaap:The Art of the Trademark in Indo-British Textile Trade, an exhibition at Bangalore’s Museum of Art and Photography inspired by Tasveer Ghar’s archive. https://map-india.org/
We are delighted to announce a forthcoming conversation with Dr. Christopher Pinney where he talks about his 50-year journey through India’s popular visual culture.
As we bring this newsletter to a close, we draw attention to Disobedient Subjects: Bombay 1930–1931 at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS). The exhibit explores the 1930s Civil Disobedience Movement as captured in a rare album of photographs at the Alkazi Collection of Photography in New Delhi. Curated by Sumathi Ramaswamy with Avrati Bhatnagar, this exhibition runs until March 31, 2026, highlighting everyday anti-colonial resistance. For more on the project, please visit: https://sites.google.com/view/
For a review on BBC News, please see https://www.bbc.com/news/
As we start on our 20th year, we renew our commitment to keep our digital home an open access, lively democratic space that will continue to serve as a hub for promoting dialogue and debate on matters pertaining to South Asian popular visual culture. Thank you for your interest in and support of our House of Pictures over the past many years. Please continue to visit our House and help sustain it as a hospitable and welcoming place for all works of popular South Asian art.
The Tasveer Ghar team:
Christiane Brosius
Sumathi Ramaswamy
Yousuf Saeed
https://www.tasveergharindia.
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