Interview: The photographic memory of a Goan who transcended the colonial gaze

On May 15, Portugal’s Museu do Oriente opened the exhibition, Foto Arte Ganesh: Goa, Photography and Memory. Curated by Professor Rosa Maria Perez, senior researcher at Lisbon’s Centre for Research in Anthropology, with assistance by Douglas Santos da Silva, the exhibition focuses on the work of late photographer Krishna Navelcar whose studio once thrived on Rua José Falcão, a bylane of Goa’s capital city, Panjim.

Although Navelcar’s Foto Estúdio Ganesh may now only be a distant memory, what the exhibition reveals is the legacy this Goan photographer created. Navelcar’s career bridged the periods of Portuguese and, then, Indian rule in Goa, spanning the 1950s to the 1980s.

During this time, the photographer captured images in official contexts, including events attended by the last two governors of Portuguese India, Paulo Bénard Guedes and Manuel Vassallo e Silva. Navelcar also documented the 1963 visit of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to post-Portuguese Goa.

The photographer’s images would appear in local Goan newspapers, but he also worked with radio stations during Goa’s Portuguese and Indian periods. For instance, his pictures show up in the Boletim da Emissora de Goa (a publication of the official radio station in Portuguese India) and he was also employed as a photographer for All India Radio from 1963 until the time of his retirement.

Yet, Navelcar also trained his camera on local goings...

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