'ART & SOUL
Picturing
the self

A chronicler with camera, Umrao Singh Sher-gil was passionate about photography, writes B. N. Goswamy

Umrao Singh Sher-gil with Indira surrounded by his musical instruments. By Umrao Singh, at Shimla. Vintage Print, 1922

— Richard Avedon

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.

— Frida Kahlo

ONE knows far less about Umrao Singh Sher-gil than about his famous daughter, Amrita. This, to be sure, is understandable, for Amrita Sher-gil is by now an Indian icon whose life was as colourful as her painting, and around whom a whole industry of writing and publication has steadily grown. But the more one gets to know about Umrao Singh — ‘Sardar Umrao Singh Majithia’ as he might have been known in his growing up years, for he came from the aristocratic Majitha clan — the more one begins to see where Amrita might have got some of her traits from. Father and daughter chose two different mediums — Umrao Singh was into photography while Amrita, as everyone knows, was a painter — but both of them were almost obsessive in their pursuits, and both of them were happy gazing at themselves. Clearly, Amrita looked at the world around herself with a keen eye; so did her father, even if concentrated mostly upon his own family. But again and again they seem to return to themselves as subjects, apparently delighting in what they saw.

While Amrita’s self-portraits have been widely published, and admired, Umrao Singh’s studies of himself have had remarkably little circulation. This unusual man, a bit eccentric perhaps — twice married, but more durably to a lovely Hungarian; a scholar of Persian and Sanskrit; somewhat reclusive by temperament but also a devoted family man — developed a passion for that newly-arrived magical device, the camera, early in life. There is an early study of his own, regally dressed in an embroidered Kashmiri robe, reading, that he took as early as 1892, when he had just entered his twenties. But he seemed to know where he was going, for there are indications that he started documenting nearly everything, most of all his photographs, very meticulously from the very beginning. This particular study, one of the many that make up a fine new publication — Umrao Singh Sher-gil: His Misery and His Manuscript, it is titled — carries a note in English in his own hand: "Study in a Vase", the caption reads along with a date: "9^th of February, 1892", followed by a complete description: "Umrao Singh: Photo by flash light, Bromide Print. By self. Lahore". So does a much, much later self-portrait, in which one sees him — or he sees himself, one should perhaps say — as a troubled thinker with a flowing beard gazing straight into the lens, a text of that great Sanskrit text, the Mandukya Upanishad, resting prominently in his lap. The caption? Inscribed on the reverse of the photograph in his own hand: "His Misery and His Manuscript. 14 Nov, 1946. By USG". More than 50 years separate these two photographs, and yet so much is common between them: the self-awareness, the desire not only to see but also to project himself, and the decision to document things with clarity. In his life with the camera, Umrao Singh took several hundreds of photographs. The archive of his surviving photographs alone comprises 1536 vintage prints, 308 glass plate negatives, 245 film negatives and 16 autochromes. The man was evidently in love with the medium.

Through his eyes, and that of his camera, one sees, fascinated, Umrao Singh again and again. Now he is a young man in the company of friends and relatives, now he stands alone, bare-bodied except for a brief loincloth, raised hands holding up dark long hair behind his head like a halo. At one time, he is a Tolstoy-like figure, head resting on hand, immersed in thought; at another he stands posing like some Shakespearean actor waiting in the wings to make an entry on to the stage. We see him clean-shaven at one step, and sporting an opulent silvery beard at others. In one photograph, he sits looking like a mad scientist surrounded by all kinds of machines and gadgets with one of which he is fiddling; in another he is seen with his grandchild, Vivan, in his lap, box camera in hand.

Certainly, the family remains in focus: tender, admiring studies of his two daughters, Amrita and Indira; his wife, Marie Antoinette, lounging or regarding herself in a mirror in a rich if oppressively crowded interior; the two girls standing on a rock in the Danube, performing a theatrical piece. But Umrao Singh keeps returning to himself at the drop of a hat, so to speak, or at the removing of a lens-cap, should one say? Among the most startling of his studies of himself are those at the age of 50, standing bare-bodied once again, and striking different poses: now like an angry rishi about to curse some hapless victim of his wrath, now standing erect as if to take in a full measure of himself in a life-size mirror. To this very ‘series’ belongs another bare-bodied portrait of himself that has a long, and telling, note scribbled on the mount. The photograph was taken, we learn, on the 11th of August 1930. But we also learn, through the note, that this is a "Photo taken on the 15^th day of fast with reduced weight and belly which has still enough fat for another week’s fast, at least. The legs have always less fat in my case owing to walking exercise but through lack of the exercise often upper body, including upper arms, there was much more adipose deposit which still remains to some extent. It is a pity no photo was taken before fast to show the disproportionate accumulations." Umrao Singh, in love with his body, was keeping close track.

Much can be done with old photographs. Vivan Sundaram, if I recall correctly, brought in, some time back, magical effects in old photographs using digital intervention. But the photographs in this volume are all seen in their pristine condition, old mounts and all, untouched, exactly as Umrao Singh left them, or meant them to be seen. There may be no true greatness in these photographs, but there is great honesty. Again, the suggestion that Umrao Singh "deserves to be seen as a pioneering figure of Indian photography" may not be easy to support (for one knows many others), but that it would not be easy to ignore him is certainly true. And there would not be many whom one can designate as chroniclers with a camera, in the manner that he was.

To go back to self-portraits. An Urdu poet once said: Ahl-e hunar koi nahin/ is liye khud-pasand hoon. (There are none around that are endowed with gifts; that (perhaps) is why I like myself.) Come to think of it, Sardar Umrao Singh could have written these lines.

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