As such, by bending down, he also looks like a supplicant–the Indian help, ready to do the Englishman’s bidding. In looking up at Edwinna, where some read lust, I read “serviam.”

but in the context of the other images j. mather found, nehru and the mountbattens is interesting because it is an image that includes the mountbattens. or rather, it is the only photo that includes any human figure representing the british colonial presence . . . all the other cartier-bresson photos mather found seem to be pretending/imagining that there are no visible human figures to directly represent the colonial power – but are there figures, events, details that are indirect visual representations of the colonial power? other kinds of indices? can anyone see them? are they figures, events, meanings that escape the visible or the frame? or are they the frame itself? or as an addendum to the argument of m.nandi, are the human figures of colonial power the intended audience?

put images in a series, and i’m game.

[Aside: One should also take with a pinch of salt the import of the Nehru-Edwina Mountbatten connection. As I've noted in an earlier comment, desis are particularly prone to positing a (malign?) female/sexual and hence "behind the scenes" explanation for various events (as noted above, Azad did so too in "India Wins Freedom." For instance, I've known a fair number of Pakistanis who attribute Mountbatten's "favoring" India over Pakistan vis-a-vis the partition awards to the Edwina-Nehru connection; on the other hand, the Hindu nationalist right claims India got a raw deal, and attributes that to the Nehru-Edwina Mountbatten connection as well!

Taking a step back, it seems to me that Mountbatten had a marked personal preference for Nehru over Jinnah, and even if there had been no Edwina-Jawaharlal connection, it's hard to see that preference not manifesting itself.]

Cartier-Bresson is most known for his “decisive moment” style of photography, which is basically to say that he waited until the world said what he wanted it to before “capturing” it objectively (he claimed) on film. That’s what all art and editorial photographers do; we lie and mislead (at our worst) and frame discourse and experience (at our best). Nothing new there.

Looking at this picture — which I vaguely remember seeing at the wee museum in Shimla’s viceregal lodge — the first thing that struck me was that it was a comment on “Britishness” first and “Indianness” second. There’s Lord Mountbatten looking proper and aloof and bored, and his wife enjoying a good joke with her distant squint and teeth hiding the fact that she enjoyed Nehru’s joke somewhat more than she ought. But Nehru does seem the buffoon here, somewhat like an early Jerry Lewis.

I wasn’t aware that HCB had been to India, so I searched and found a small trove of images on the Net (with even more in his In India monograph). All in all they aren’t much different from typical, high-end travel photographs of India and other “exotic” places.

There’s the laborers doing their thing ( http://www.afterimagegallery.com/bressondrying.htm and http://www.yoganga.com/paul/wp-content/images/hcb_india-7.jpg ) and the Native American-esque robed women holding their hands up √† la Edward Curtis ( http://www.afterimagegallery.com/bressonsrinagar.htm ) and the lazy native and the alluring local woman and the monumental architecture and the freakish (all at http://a.parsons.edu/~madhumita/thesis/Bresson-images.html ) and the impoverished ( http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1318621 ) and the un-Christian religion ( http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/exhibitions/bresson/cremations.html ).

All very much within the time that they were made, for better or worse: ( http://www.singergallery.com/gallery.cfm?artistID=174&start=1 ).

What I did find interesting was Madhumita Nandi’s thesis ( http://a.parsons.edu/~madhumita/thesis/proposal.html ):

“At an immediate level it is to explore and create short narratives (that interrelate to form a possible larger whole) that seek to appropriate the “Indian Experience ” for the ‘outsider’.

“These narratives will suppose interested non-Indian audience that want to know more about India than snake charmers, elephants & the Taj Mahal. The stories will attempt to invite the audience to suspend perceived impressions momentary to become part of a space that is India.

“The larger intention is driving this thesis exploration is a personal need to reconstruct memories and cultural identity.”

Interestingly, Azad’s “India Wins Freedom” (the unexpurgated version) suggests that Edwina Mountbatten was crucial in getting Nehru to agree to partition (according to Azad, Patel– “…would not be incorrect to call him the father of India’s partition”– had accepted the idea a while back but Nehru was opposed as late as 1947, but had come around within a month of Mountbatten’s arrival in India). Though one does take this sort of thing with a pinch of salt, as desis are often all-too-ready to believe that a behind-the-scenes female/sexual liaison is to explain for much…