Paper Jewels Videos
A video introduction to the book is on the Author page.
A look at the Lansdowne Bridge over the Indus at Sukkur through early postcards by publishers like Fred Bremner, and views from the living Tombs of the Seven Sisters across from the bridge made today.
Step into Frere Hall, Karachi, one of the city's landmark buildings and one of the British Raj's most unusual structures. Still an important site for visitors from all walks of life, art gallery and cultural space, it was the subject of numerous old postcards by Karachi publishers a century ago. Postcard Pearls combine old postcards and contemporary video and pix with commentary to push the boundaries between past and present.
Author and scholar F.S. Aijazuddin interviews Omar Khan during the launch of Paper Jewels in Pakistan during the Lahore Literary Festival. The slides and discussion focus on early postcards of Pakistan and their varied publishers in places like Lahore, Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar, and covers most of the country with some of its earliest and most widely-seen images. Many of these images have rarely been seen before and were not published in the book Paper Jewels.
An illustrated lecture with over 80 slides and question and answer session on Postcards from the Raj hosted by Dr. Asma Qazmi at the University of California Berkeley's Institute of South Asian Studies on Sept. 10, 2019. It covers some of the earliest postcards of India, the Ravi Varma Press and M.V. Dhurandhar, Clifton & Co. and Raphael Tuck & Sons and Independence Movement postcards. A comprehensive look at the postcard medium during the colonial period during the whole of British India and Ceylon.
M.V. Dhurandhar was probably India's most significant postcard artist, responsible for an exquisite series of 70 postcards illustrating the early types that emerged in the growing metropolis of Bombay. This video shows many of these cards, discusses their beauty and characteristics and what we know about their creator, one of India's most prolific artists in the early 20th century.
This video looks at the early history of the Ravi Varma Press and the role of its chief lithographer Paul Gerhardt in early postcard publishing in Mumbai. It shows some of the earliest postcards of the city published by the Press, using diary entries by Ravi Varma's brother to show the sequence of events that led to their publication. Omar Khan also discusses what became of the Press and its role in publishing postcards and oleographs in popularizing Ravi Varma's images.
Werner Rossler was one of the earliest publishers of postcards of Calcutta, with a number of postmarked examples going back to 1897. Omar Khan talks about these postcards, what little is known about this possibly Austrian photographer in the city who has his exquisite lithographic postcards printed in Austria, and looks at one or two examples written and signed by Rossler himself. This video was included in the exhibitions in Mumbai and Delhi.
A complete video of the Paper Jewels exhibition opening talk by Omar Khan at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum on Aug. 18, 2018 which focussed on the history of early postcards in Bombay [Mumbai]. Includes introduction by Museum Director Tasneem Mehta, and post-talk discussion with Tasneem Mehta and Co-Curator Rahaab Allana.