Royal albums open up to the public, as Udaipur shows heritagewallas how to earn their keep
Catalogue and collate the photography archives stored within the inner recesses and storerooms of Udaipur’s vast City Palace complex. This simple brief, covering around 3,000 photographs, has grown into a mammoth task for Pramod Kumar K.G., Consultant-Curator at the City Palace Museum. The archive has emerged as one of the richest finds of 19th and early 20th century photography in India: 15,000 photographs and still counting. He estimates that the end count will be around 18,000, assuming one were to stop counting in 1947, when Mewar merged into the Indian union.
Among the significant images is a rare photograph of Bhupal Singh with his father Fateh Singh, in the presence of Prince Albert Victor and the Duke of Connaught, visitors to the court. This is one of the only two photographs that show the father and son together.
(This story appears in the 25 September, 2009 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)