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Uneducated people always confuse photographs and reproductions of paintings in India. They are always referring to painted calendar pictures of the Gods (Kali with her four arms and blood countenance) as a photograph. They are unable to distinguish the difference, between the two-dimensional representation of reality and fantasy. Any visual presentation in picture form is accepted as being true especially if it confirms familiar beliefs of the viewer. I have also seen in the United States a similar confusion between photograph and painting among unsophisticated people. There is a willingness to accept almost any realistic or semi-realistic picture whether made by hand or camera as a true representation of things as they are.

There is still an essential magic in the visual arts. True the magic power has been reduced in most technically advanced countries because of an overabundance of visual images. To live in 20th century America is to be bombarded by visual forms. Accepted as a daily part of life they lose some of their impact. But in low literacy, pre-television, pre mass slick color reproduction magazines in India, the visual image retains is magic. When you have a large part of the population that can not read or write the visual image, whether a three-dimensional idol or two-dimensional calendar representation of a Hindu God assumes a powerful importance in the lives of people.

Hindi movies here run for months, people clamor for tickets. They go two, three, or more times to the same picture. Near riots sometimes break out at the box office of cheap seats. I remember as a child of twelve the power the movies exercised over me and my inability to distinguish the over-colored dream world of M.G.M. from the reality of Albany, New York. For the poorly educated Indian adult the Hindi movies exercise the same powers of confusion, the suspension of reason. [One of the main attractions of the Hindi movie is the Hindi film song not only the visual illusion. Also the average Indian lives such a stagnant life of dullness and poor subsistence that any chance for the relief of fantasy is grabbed.]

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The visual image here retains some of the magic it had when primitive man first drew on cave walls, when the Italian peasant was first let into the ____ chapel to gasp at Giotto paintings of the life of Christ. The visual image was first used for religious purposes. To make familiar the unknown, to give shape and form to the forces controlling primitive man so they could be worshipped and subdued. Outside of the inroads of western technology, the visual image in India is still primarily concerned and still connected with the religious. They iconography of the Hindu Gods is ancient, complex, and still exercises for the average Hindu the old power of visual belief. That what is rendered visible is true.

Sept 7, 70

In India perhaps more than any other country, historically the visual image was concerned almost exclusively with religion. Religion permeated all aspects of Indian life and art.

Ramesh's wife wrote him a letter from her father's house in the village where she was sent after the marriage. He has not communicated with her since she left, a period of three months ago. When he received the letter, he was infuriated because the Hindi was so bad. He tore the letter up and threw it in the gutter. His parents did not know - the letter had arrived; the mailman gave it to him as he was going out. He is disappointed, he wanted an intellectual wife, someone who could understand his work, someone he could talk to. He is worried about introducing her to his friends, because she is uneducated. So he behaves as though the marriage doesn't exist. He told me before that the marriage was not consummated. But now he says it was. After the wedding when she came with him to his father's house, a day was fixed by the astrologers and priests for the consummation. His mother prepared a room downstairs. A bed was brought and the bride was sent to the room, then Ramesh was told to go and join her. Of course the