Exposing the Zenana: Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II's Photographs of Women in Purdah

Author: Weinstein Laura  

Publisher: Routledge Ltd

ISSN: 0308-7298

Source: History of Photography, Vol.34, Iss.1, 2010-02, pp. : 2-16

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Abstract

This paper explores a group of photographic portraits taken by the Jaipur maharaja Ram Singh II of female inhabitants of his zenana. These largely unexplored portraits of upper-class Rajput women who lived in purdah inhabit a peculiar intermediate zone between orientalist 'harem' photography and Victorian studio portraiture, upsetting our expectations of both. In order to elucidate the unique character of these portraits, this paper sets them within the context of colonial and Rajput ideas about female roles in domestic space and norms of female representation. It argues that the portraits present the zenana as a sanitized and modernized domestic space and thereby defend this long-standing domestic institution from the critiques of late nineteenth-century social reform movements. Ultimately, Ram Singh's portraits of women in purdah are found to represent a staging of modernity in the service of tradition.