Photography 7


to me were of Ceylon women. However, though these images are available for digital viewing in various public archives, they are not well, or dare I say, properly, understood and explained by Western commentators. My view is that these images reflect Cameron’s respect for Ceylon women, as suggested by their poses and dress. Te images are an ode to the Ceylon woman’s stature, elegance, and presence. I was also interested in the jewellery the models wear as objects of material culture that give hints on their ethnicity and background (fig 5). My research on the Rothschild’s


Fig 5 Ceylon Woman by Julia Margaret Cameron, George Eastman Museum Collection


of the RAS. Te third collection


offered another great discovery in that those 67 loose prints of archaeological were likely taken by famed HCP Bell, the head of the Colonial Archaeological Department in Ceylon in the late 19th century. His photographs made their way to the UK, landing in the RAS Archives. Trough this publication, we gain insight into Bell’s personal view on antiquity through what he focussed on. In Bell’s collection, we also see an early example of a non-commercial photographer, documenting his professional


remit, heritage


preservation, in a unique way (figs 3 and 4). It was important to include Julia


Margaret Cameron in this discussion because, despite her renown, few know that she spent some years in Sri Lanka, where she died and is buried. Her photographs that were of interest


Fig 6 Street at Kandy, NCR Album, 1902, Rothschild Foundation Collection


Archive provides an example of how archives can keep discovering the magic of their own collections. Nathan C Rothschild (NCR), the son of the famed Lord LW Rothschild (for the Balfour Declaration), travelled to Sri Lanka in 1902 en route to Japan. A couple of weeks after my review of what they thought was the only material on Sri


Lanka that they had for this tour, the director excitedly emailed to me to say they had discovered a second album from the same trip with a great deal more of images of Sri Lanka. What a find that was, because those images share a much more engaged story. We see that he visited Keena House, most likely a planter’s bungalow in which NCR stayed during his visit to the hill station of Nuwara Eliya, Central Province, and we can also see his views of the picturesque landscapes, people, and points of interest. Rothchild’s collection is distinctive in this review as well because his images offer early example of a unique view of Ceylon. His photographs were taken by him for his own use, and not from commercial studio offerings (fig 6). But there was still more to do.


Now that I had an understanding of these early British collections, I wanted to explore the relationship between some of the collectors and the Ceylonese they referred to in their writings. I will not give too much away here and allow the reader to make those discoveries through the book itself, but suffice it to say that those early photographs from the Ceylonese families’ collections show a very different Ceylon. As I wrote on and around these revisiting them


photographs,


repeatedly, they have become a part of my own frame of reference, not just as a scholar and collector, but also as a ‘vein of influence’, I feel a


kinship with the


I have travelled with them and have a sense of what they experienced in Ceylon (fig 7). I now understand better the


connectivity and agency of these photographs as a past construct with


Fig 7 Miriam Deraniyagala, circa 1910, Amerasinghe Ganendra Collection continuing


influence, through collectors. this publication


including and


discussion, to inform our understanding of Ceylon and the people who visited or lived there. In this way, my hope is that the publication will also give us pause to consider how our interaction with these


photographs continues, in itself, to be a ‘vein of influence’ that


• Veins of Influence, Neptune Publications,


ISBN 9786246335441, US$42, or Ebook US$18 veinsofinfluence.com, neptunepublications.com/product/ veins-of-influence/


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