India: With 136 plates in color, 17 Decorative Motifs

by Aubrey Menen, Roloff Beny (Photographer)

Book by Beny, Roloff, Menen, Aubrey

236 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1969

About the author

Salvator Aubrey Clarence Menen was born in 1912 in London, of Irish and Indian parents. After attending University College, London he worked as a drama critic and a stage director. When World War II broke out, he was in India, where he organized pro-Allied radio broadcasts and edited film scripts for the Indian government. After the war ended, he returned to London to work with an advertising agency's film department, but the success of his first novel, The Prevalence of Witches (1947), induced him to take up writing full-time. Aubrey Menen’s writings, often satirical, explore the nature of nationalism and the cultural contrast between his own Irish–Indian ancestry and his traditional British upbringing. Apart from his novels and non-fiction works Menen wrote two autobiographies titled Dead Man in the Silver Market (1953) and The Space within the Heart (1970). He died in 1989 in Thiruvananthapuram.

Reviews

[Paul C · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a library copy. It is a large format hardback box - a bit of a "coffee table" production. That makes it a very poor book to read as a PDF on an eReader.

This was the book given by the Govt of India in the year it was published as gifts to visiting dignitaries. It was published by Thames & Hudson Ltd (1 Nov. 1969), so is a great record of how India saw and projected itself in the 1960s in the days of economic isolation with its closed economy.

Most of the book is writing - with essays on a host of different aspects of Indian life by Aubrey Menen; for example "How to be a Hindu and fight like the Devil" and "Why Indians do not get better all the time".

This means that Roloff Beny's photos take second place in the book - and yes, there are some good ones but they are simply outclassed by later images of India from the likes of Steve MuCurry. Why outclassed? Well most of the images in the book look to be "snapshots" taken in passing - the photographer hasn't waited for the perfect time of day, or moved to optimise the composition. This is sad as there are a few absolutely wonderful set-piece images - the Taj Mahal, some Mughal Gardens etc. but many "classic views" are missing.

< img src="http://blog.iso50.com/30971/roloff-be..." / >

What we do know is that Roloff Beny returned to India later and made a primarily photographic book just limiting himself to Rajasthan - and that is, in my opinion, a sign of what he could have done if he had been given the time and support sufficient for a subject as broad as "India". To be fair, trying to encompass all of India in one book of images will always be a hard task that has failed many so-called "Great Photographers".

Lastly, while Thames & Hudson have made wonderful black and white photobooks in the 1960s era, the image reproduction is limited in their dynamic range. Where Beny has a low contrast, subtle colour image this works - but travellers to India in that era know that it was (and still is) a riot of colour and detail. In his hi-contrast pictures, many come out simply garish and uncomfortable - yet I suspect if we could see his transparencies, we might print them very differently today. Perhaps the Roloff Beny archives in Canada could think about this?

< img src="https://alchetron.com/Roloff-Beny" / >

So I say this is a snapshot in time (1960s) and a hint of what it could have been if Beny had given the time and resources to the "India" project that he did to Classical Italy and Greece.

If you are a photobook fan - I say read this as a library copy but try very hard to get a sight of his book Rajasthan!

So I rate this as a 3-star book - with some scatterings of 5-star "what could have beens".

[Neeraj Shrivastav · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://neerajshrivastav.com/2024/08/...