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H-ASIA April 5, 2007 Further response re: Margaret Bourke-White as a primary source on India and Pakistan, 1946-1949 ************************************************************************* From: philip woods <philip.woods@tiscali.co.uk> In reply to Sumit Guha's query about the value of Margaret Bourke-White's writings on India at the time of Independence and Partition, I do = think the failure of historians to cite Bourke-White as a source at the time of Partition highlights their general neglect of visual sources in history. The newsreel cameramen and still photographers were some of the most valuable reporters of the key events in Indian history but not enough has been done to research the background of their work and their potential contribution to the historical record. There is, however, an excellent article which contrasts the approaches of Bourke-White and Cartier-Bresson in their photographing Gandhi: Cookman, Claude. "Margaret Bourke-White and Henri Cartier-Bresson: Gandhi's Funeral." _The History of Photography_ 22, 2 (Summer 1998): 199-209. For further discussion of the role of newsreel cameramen at the time, see Philip Woods, "'Business as Usual': British newsreel coverage of Indian Independence and Partition, 1947-8" in Kaul, Chandrika (ed.) _Empire and Media_ (Macmillan/Palgrave), 2006. Why not set newsreel samples as sources for students looking at partition?- they are available free of charge to be downloaded from the Pathe website: http://www.britishpathe.com/ Dr Philip Woods, Kingston University, London ****************************************************************** To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to: <H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu> For holidays or short absences send post to: <listserv@h-net.msu.edu> with message: SET H-ASIA NOMAIL Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
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