Have further questions?
About the Project
Rare Negatives and Slides at the Center for Art and Archaeology of the American Institute of Indian Studies
Project Grant
This project aims to digitally preserve a select group of black & white film negatives and color slides from AIIS archives. The negatives were created by field experts and professional photographers during research surveys between 1966 and 1990. Because of their age and repetitive handling for printing, the negatives have become increasingly fragile. The images document heritage buildings in various Indian states (Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, etc) that are decayed, damaged, or inaccessible. Also included are images of rare terracotta sculptures unearthed in excavations conducted at archaeological sites in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Bihar, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Karnataka, and a collection of miniature paintings commissioned by Mughal and Rajput patrons during the 16th to the 19th centuries in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh.
Project Lead
Dr. Vandana Sinha, Center for Art and Archaeology at the American Institute of Indian Studies
Host Institution
American Institute of Indian Studies
More Information
Digital Book Series: Sundarkand
The Center for Art and Archaeology (CA&A) of the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) has launched a digital book that reassembles the text and paintings of the Sundarkand, the fifth sub-book of India’s great epic, the Ramcaritmanas, “the lake of the deeds of Rama,” commissioned by the Maharaja of Banaras in the early 1800s as part of a lavishly illustrated seven-volume compendium. The digital Sundarkand pairs illustrations and text as presented in the now dispersed original. Philip Lutgendorf, former AIIS President, a renowned scholar and translator of the Ramcaritmanas, has provided commentary on each pairing that makes the digitized Sundarkand accessible to a wide range of readers.
The digitization of the Sundarkand is part of a larger project that preserves 10,000 film negatives and slides from CA&A photo-archives. The entire undertaking has been made possible by a grant to the Center for Art and Archaeology (CA&A) of the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) from the Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) of the UCLA Library with funding from Arcadia, a charitable foundation dedicated to protecting nature, preserving cultural heritage, and promoting open access to knowledge. The American Institute of Indian Studies has also collaborated with the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) in Bengaluru to virtually reassemble the entire Banaras Ramcaritmanas in a digital flip book to debut at the exhibition on this little-known masterpiece.
(opens in a new tab)