Just north of Manhattan’s Union Square (17th St. between Broadway and 5th Ave.), a small shop called Beads of Paradise has a big India display in the window. It’s the same old exotic schtick: saris, elephant statuettes, beads, you know the shpiel.
But the centerpiece of the display caught my eye: they’re selling some random desi family’s photos for half a G apiece so they can grace a Union Square trust-funder’s mantelpiece. Just imagine that poor family, the Griswolds of Rajasthan, cleaning out their attic and realizing some hippie’s snuck off with their family memories.
And what if we’d done it in reverse? Tourist in Delhi: ‘Thelma, come quick! I think I found cousin Edna’s bat mitzvah photos!’
Seen in San Francisco: here.
Come get my family’s sepia-tinted photos, that’s the only way someone connected to me would see the insides of those tony homes!
Is this any worse than priceless Indian temple sculptures and adornments being auctioned at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, etc? It grieves me that the world’s property graces someone’s private chambers now.
[Devil’s advocate moment: What if a desi had sold his pictures to this outfit?]
I don’t know if its figure-out-able…some people take pictures of starving kids in Africa and put it in their living rooms
Ok, everybody email me your old family photos, I’ll crumple them a bit, drop a few stains, get them looking really “authentic” in photoshop and then us NY mutineers can start supplying Real Live Indian Ancestor Photos to this place.
what can I say. it’s the bania in me
Actually, this is done all the time. Old photographs have artistic value; most old photos are family portraits. A friend of mine is a collector, he has some old Japanese portraits. Similarly, I saw an exhibition of African family portraits at a museum; they show old western portraits too. What do you think you’re looking at when you see oil paintings in the museum – many of those are commissioned portraits, family or not. I love old photographic portraits and would collect them if I had the cash, exoticization or no.
p.s. if there was something similar in Delhi people would complain that Indians had to buy antique photos of white people which demonstrated their inferiority complex.