- 19 June 2026
- 5:30 – 7:30 pm
- A lecture in memory of Prof. Natasha Eaton, a highly respected scholar of British and South Asian art based at University College London.
- Paul Mellon Centre and Online, Paul Mellon Centre
Commencing with a retelling of the productivity of translational unruliness in Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi, this talk with Christopher Pinney offer fragments of an ethnography of camera-use in twenty-first century India as they might be seen through the lens of Natasha Eaton’s thought and writing. This can be described as Eaton-escence, a dazzling perspective and radiance, akin to the ‘pearlescence’ she engaged when encountering the work of the Sri Lanka photographer Lionel Wendt.
The lecture attempts to confront Pinney’s own relatively conventional conceptualisations, and adventures in rural India and South Asian photo studios, with the wilder illumination and brilliance of Natasha’s distinctive approach. In the process rural Jain devotional images become ‘vernicles’, magic clay pots offer lessons about mimesis and alterity, and car headlights in Lucknow become the source of an inextinguishable Sufi light. Eaton-escence takes its place alongside pearlescence, opalescence, and iridescence.
Image Courtesy of Suresh Punjabi, Suhag Studio, Nagda.
Accessibility at a Glance at the Paul Mellon Centre
✔ Level access: A portable ramp is available to provide level access. Please ring the bell on the right-hand railings outside the main entrance at number 16 for assistance. If possible, please let us know in advance if you will need the ramp so we can have it ready. Please contact us at events@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk
✔ Accessible for large power wheelchairs
✔ One accessible toilet on the ground floor
✔ Livestreamed
✔ Recorded
✔ Hearing loop available (please contact events@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk)
✔ Closed caption on Zoom
✖ BSL
About the speaker
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Christopher Pinney is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at University College London. He has held visiting positions at the Australian National University, University of Chicago, University of Cape Town, Northwestern University, Boğaziçi University (Istanbul), and Jagiellonian University (Krakow).
In 2019 Christopher was a Visiting Professor at EHESS Paris and delivered a series of GIAN lectures at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. His research interests cover the art and visual culture of South Asia, with a particular focus on the history of photography and chromolithography in India. He has also worked on industrial labour and Dalit goddess possession. Amongst his publications are Camera Indica (1997), ‘Photos of the Gods’ (2004), The Coming of Photography in India (2008), Photography and Anthropology (2011), The Waterless Sea (2018), and Lessons from Hell (2018).As part of the PhotoDemos Collective he published Citizens of Photography: The Camera and the Political Imagination (2023).