Historical Representations Through a Lens

The three books reviewed largely deal with the representation of history—partly (as in the first book) or exclusively (as in the other two books) through the medium of historical architecture.
The first book is essentially a catalogue of an exhibition centred around an album of photographs of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry, taken in 1950 by Henri Cartier-Bresson. The authors describe it as ‘an attempt to unearth the “lesser-known” visual history of the city, deeply inspired by the coming of the French’.