 In researching the visual, we attempt to read the stories that a visual or an image tells. An image, like any other entity, is situated in a given context. It derives its meaning from all aspects that make up the context – people, activities, events, beliefs, ideas, and so on. In a sense, images too become our participants and through them, we try to learn about the environment in which they exist. Maybe an example will make this clearer. Let us refer to a strand of my research into Beale painting. In the exploration of the journey of Beale painting, my team and I came across what seemed like an important moment in its history. This was the shift from painting on walls to painting on paper or canvas. This shift had come about as a result of interventions by artists and craft activists in the late 1980s, led by the artist Jay Swaminathan. The shift was connected to the socio-economic conditions of the community. The Beale's have faced decades of social and economic discrimination and marginalization. Their forests have been usurped by multiple mainstream governments. Due to these factors, generation after generation, the Beale's have had to leave their villages and their forests to make a living as manual, unskilled workers in large cities. That such communities should be left alone to themselves doesn't seem to be a viable proposition either. Their jungles no more belong to them. They can no more practice their traditional mode of cultivation in the name of conservation of forests, which are anyway being systematically destroyed for catering to urban and development needs. They cannot seek and hunt game anymore and the inroads of the money economy are seemingly irreversible. Swaminathan's suggestion that the Beale's paint on paper and sell their paintings through fairs and exhibitions gave them access to a new means of livelihood. This was an option that enabled them to remain connected to their culture. Understanding this history, I came to see that there is an important connection between the shifts in Beale painting and the community's socio-economic conditions. Exploring this connection helped me understand the socio-economic structures and the history that have defined the lives of the Beale's in Madhya Pradesh. As the paintings became more commodified, many things changed. The size of the paintings changed. They became smaller to fit paper and canvas. Because they were being painted for a larger audience, they now depicted subjects that related to the Beale's everyday lives. And Beale women who traditionally are not allowed to paint sacred images were now making paintings on canvas and paper. Observing these changes, I wanted to explore one more question. Did these shifts affect their relationship to painting? Would they be amenable to creating them on a computer? And they said no. It is still a sacred art and has to be painted by hand. And because I asked this question, they explained to me that each dot that forms a Beale painting represents an ancestor. So each image that they make is a universe of memories of their ancestors. The fact that this painting is going to be sold does not change this. For the Beale's painting remains a way of praying to their gods for the well-being of the community. As we read visuals and the act of making them, we are able to draw connections between the visual and its context. Making these connections, we learn about the larger socio-cultural and economic structures in which the visual exists. And we learn about the meanings individual participants associate with the visual. There is another aspect to researching the visual. We pay attention to the content, form and aesthetic of the visual. We draw connections between a particular visual and the other visual elements in the environment. By drawing these connections, we try to understand the visual culture or what we may call the visual language of our participants' world. Let's elaborate on this a bit more. In doing visual ethnography, we try to read a visual at multiple levels. We try to read a visual or a set of visuals on its own. What does its form, content and aesthetic tell us? So for instance, in reading of the Beale paintings, I pay attention to their form made of dots, to the colors used and the characters and objects depicted. In doing this, I tried to understand what the painting or the art form was trying to convey. So for example, I noticed how people, objects and space were depicted in Beale paintings. Objects and structures like houses, trees, rivers are painted such that they are easy to recognize. But the human form is quite abstract. This tells us something about the Beale's ways of seeing. We also try to read different forms of visual expressions such as craft objects, paintings, prints, media images and so on. So in my work with the Beale's, besides observing their paintings, I also observed the objects used in their everyday lives and in their rituals. I looked at their landscapes and activities and how these were represented in the paintings. Looking at all of these, I learned something of the community's visual language. Additionally, I looked at the Beale's traditional stories and folklore, their oral culture. I observed their prayer rituals which engage all of the senses, smells, sounds, tastes. In living with them, I experienced the food date, the weather conditions they lived in, the textures and smells that made up their words. Through these, I attempted to draw connections between their sensorial experiences and their visual expressions. Let me give you another example that I like very much, which is the work of anthropologist Christopher Pinin. His work focuses on the poster-making tradition in India, in particular on the pictures of gods created in the early days of printing in British India. These images are known as chromolithographs. We are quite familiar with these images as we may have seen them in many homes and establishments. In his work, Photos of the Gods, Pinin analyzed these to create a narrative of national consciousness that emerged in the subcontinent around that time. So what do you think Pinin asked himself as he looked at these images? Pinin's process of researching these visuals is relevant to our discussion. He interprets the images at two levels. First, by reading what the images themselves say, and second, by reading different forms of visual expressions such as theater, painting and prints. Let us see how he does each of these and what he learns in the process. One of the contexts in Pinin's research is Calcutta of the late 1800s and early 1900s. This is where the first lithography press, the Calcutta Art Studio, was established. The studio began with creating images of gods which became hugely popular. The patrons of the studio bought these images not as art but as pictures of gods which they could worship in their homes. Pinin became curious about how these mass produced images became sacred objects. He looked carefully at what the images depicted and what ideas defined the subject, composition and aesthetic of the image. He came to see that images were defined as sacred because of the ways in which the gods were depicted. In many of the images, the deity was placed in the center, front facing, sometimes framed by worshippers on either sides. This was uncannily similar to how idols are placed in temples. This led Pinin to explore the idea of darshan which is an important concept in Hindu practice of worship. To perform a darshan means to see the gods and to be seen by them. Forms of worship such as pilgrimage or praying before an idol or a picture are based on and defined by this mutual seeing of the god and the worshipper. If you have visited a Hindu temple, think of how the idol is placed. It is always made to face center front. It is visually emphasized by placing various elements such as pillars or even smaller idols on either side. It is often placed in a way that enables the worshipper to make eye contact with the deity. In making the chromolithographs, the artist translated this idea of darshan into their prints using these basic visual techniques. Besides placing the deity center front, they emphasize the gaze of the deity by giving visual importance to the eyes or by making them large. Sometimes they added props such as curtains, framing the deity, giving them more visual importance. In this manner, the artist tried to emphasize the visual connection between the deity and the worshipper, thus fulfilling the desire for darshan. To Pini, coming from a western culture, such a depiction stood out. It contrasted with how gods were depicted in western classical art as separated from the world of the devotee. But in 19th century Bengal, these contrasting ways of seeing were coming together. Modernist ideas championed by the British and existing ideals of Hinduism were interacting with each other. This interaction created a new form of Hindu consciousness. Pini recognized this mix of ideas in the prints created by the Calcutta Art Studio. The artists of the studio had been trained in art schools run by British educators and administrators. The artists were influenced as much by the ideas of their Hindu patrons as they were by their British instructors. The images from this coming together of ideas were interesting and sometimes strange. Like this image, depicting a myth from the life of Shiva where Shiva seated not quite in the center, looks sideways and directs his burning gaze towards Madan, a minor deity. As you may notice here, the painting departs from the center front style of idle depiction. But that is not the only departure. Shiva's Kailash Parbat is transported from the Himalayas to a setting resembling the European Alps dotted with pine trees native to Scotland. Let us take one more example. See this image of Nala and Damyanti produced by the studio in 1880. Nala and Damyanti, characters from Hindu mythology were royals of distant kingdoms. They fell in love with each other simply by hearing about the others' qualities. Damyanti chose Nala as groom rejecting the gods who had proposed to marry her. Angered that she chose a mere mortal over gods, the demon god Kali cursed the couple. As a result, after some years of living together as king and queen, they were forced out of their kingdom and exiled into the wilderness. One night, during their exile, under the influence of the curse, Nala abandoned Damyanti while she was asleep. This print depicts that fateful night. The image locates them in a pastoral landscape which looks very European. Nala and Damyanti, the demon Kali shown in the sky, the trees and rocks are all painted in a classical European way. All this must have been unfamiliar to the Indians buying these prints. Both these images situate familiar characters Shiva, Nala, Damyanti in unfamiliar European-looking settings. Why would the artists do such a mix? There can be different interpretations of this. Pini read these images as the coming together of different symbols, entities and styles. As they came together, the symbolism and meaning of these entities transformed. In European art, a pastoral setting was often used to depict a sense of belonging with nature. In the Nala and Damyanti image, it becomes a space of un-belonging, posing harsh and unwelcome conditions for Nala and Damyanti who have been forced out of their palatial lives. There can be one more interpretation. Let us look at the Madan Bhasma print once again. Here Shiva's abode, Mount Kailash, resembles a Swiss alpine landscape. Perhaps the artist was trying to equate the divinity of Kailash with the foreignness of European mountains. By making this comparison, he could be saying that the place where our gods live are foreign to us. They are unlike anything most of us have ever seen or ever will. He could also have been saying that Europe must be divine like the abode of our gods. In the Nala and Damyanti print, the artist creates a space that is mighty, imposing and terrifying. There is nothing familiar or comforting in the forest. The foreign elements and style of painting and the situation of Nala and Damyanti together create a sense of un-belonging and helplessness. Here the artist equated Europeanness with a discomforting kind of foreignness before which one is helpless. So maybe in making this print, the artist was depicting the sense of alienation and lack of control that many Indians felt before the European colonizers. In this Nala, we may read an image to come up with multiple interpretations of its context. Pini read these images to make sense of the different social and cultural movements taking place in the early 1900s. So far in this discussion, we have talked about how Christopher Pini tried to read a set of visuals on their own and the insights that emerged from such a reading. In the same study, he read across different forms of visual expression and he explored the theater production of that era. This led to some fascinating insights. We will discuss those in our next section where we continue this conversation on researching the visual.