Illustrates The Kasi Yatra or pilgrimage to Benaras. This portion of the cermony is purely symbolic.
| Photo Credit: Sarmaya Arts Foundation
The photo album opens with a panoramic shot of a majestic palace. Over the next few pages, we witness a wedding ceremony unfold in stunning detail — image after image following the nuptial procession through multiple venues and various rituals, and a teeming crowd of onlookers.
I wouldn’t blame you for thinking I was describing the Ambani wedding. But my reference is a bit older. Over 100 years old, in fact. I’m looking at the wedding album of Yuvaraja Kanteerava Narasimharaja Wadiyar, the prince of Mysore state, who married Yuvarani Kempu Cheluvamma Niyavaru Urs in June 1910.
The Nagavali ceremony, which was performed on the fifth day, and was the last of the religious rites in connection with the wedding, concluding with the extinction of the sacred fire.
| Photo Credit:
Sarmaya Arts Foundation
In 1910, photography was a rare phenomenon in India. Only the British and Indian elite could afford to get their pictures taken at the (often European-run) photography studios in the cities. It was rarer still for people to have even a single wedding portrait made, let alone a full album’s worth. That’s what makes the Mysore Yuvaraja’s album so extraordinary for the time. Shot by Barton Son & Co and Weile & Wecksler, these images are striking for the level of detail they portray as well as the story they attempt to convey.
Symbol of resilience
Photo albums are carefully edited and curated narratives about the events and the people they document. In this remarkable document, which is part of the archives of Sarmaya Arts Foundation, you’ll notice that the palace and its interiors are as important a character as the people in the frame. This is a deliberate choice because the prince’s wedding was the first major event to be hosted at Amba Vilas Palace. The now iconic Mysore Palace was being built by British architect Henry Irwin, literally rising from the ashes of the wooden palace that caught fire and burnt down during the wedding of Princess Jayalakshammani in 1897.
The Hall of Amba Vilas in the new palace where the wedding presents were displayed.
| Photo Credit:
Sarmaya Arts Foundation
The landmark, which took 15 years to rebuild, became a symbol of the kingdom’s resilience. In 1910, the new palace was still two years from completion but the scale of its magnificence is apparent in these photos. The wedding — and the album — attempts to portray the undiminished power of the Wadiyars and the kingdom of Mysore.
Viewing this album in 2024, I’m struck by the thoughtful storytelling that has gone into every detail, from the framing of the shots to the order in which the images are arranged. The photographs showcase not just the splendour of the occasion, but also the culture and traditions of the time. We get front-row seats to the important ceremonies that took place over the five-day wedding, from the kasi yatra and nagavalli ceremony, to the many rituals performed in front of the sacred fire.
(Clockwise from top left) His Highness the Yuvaraja mounting his state elephant to set out for the marriage pavilion; the procession leaving the new palace in the Fort; the procession en route to the marriage pavilion; the Yuvaraja entering the grounds of Jagan Mohan Palace.
| Photo Credit:
Sarmaya Arts Foundation
Flotsam of our online lives
As a wedding photographer, I cover ceremonies all over the country and abroad. At the end of each assignment, I deliver pictures (often hundreds) in an easy-to-share link. Only a minuscule portion of my clients want a printed wedding album.
As much as I enjoy working in the digital medium, I can’t help but feel that there is something lacking in the way we preserve memories today. A digital album doesn’t come close to a carefully selected set of images printed and bound in a book that you can hold in your hands and luxuriate in its tactility.
The bride next to her mother, who is veiled; the ceremony in the marriage mantap.
| Photo Credit:
Sarmaya Arts Foundation
Digital pictures become the flotsam of our life online, part of the ephemeral documentation we are constantly undertaking — all of it to be forgotten until an algorithm decides to resurface a photo as a memory or highlight. But an album is something that lasts, a thing of tangible beauty that you can return to whenever the fancy strikes. It tells your story just the way you’d like it to be remembered. Even 100 years later.
The writer is a documentary-style wedding photographer based in Chennai.
The sixth in a series of columns by sarmaya.in, a digital archive of India’s diverse histories and artistic traditions.
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