Paper short abstract:

Through Maynard Owen Williams’ photograph from 1921 titled “Where Electricity Dispels the Illusion of Arabian Nights,” this paper will examine the (imagined) cityscape of Lahore, Pakistan, and the role of architecture and its archives in formations of Place and Identity.

Paper long abstract:

The impetus for this research is a proliferation of, and predilection for, digitised archival images, on the internet more broadly, and within social media more specifically, of black and white photographs of the late-19th and early-20th century architecture from the Indo-Pak subcontinent. I will discuss a photograph taken by Maynard Owen Williams, an American photojournalist with National Geographic Society, in Lahore (Pakistan) in 1921 titled "Where Electricity Dispels the Illusion of Arabian Nights," that has received particular attention. I intend to use this image emblematically to examine how the visual and textual representations of architecture perform as markers of identity, in particular, the lexicon of wood carved balconies, arches, fenestrations and doors that makes locations within the region distinctive. These markers, often of nostalgia/memory or desire/utopia, are dynamic, heterogeneous, and evolve within ever-changing contexts. So where, perhaps in 1921, the imagined cityscape of Lahore was part of an American photographer's odyssey and captured an illusory, albeit tainted, nostalgia, by the twenty first century this visual depiction is often remarked as a utopian ideal by citizens of that city, a "location of longing" as suggested by Saleema Waraich. This paper will explore the performativity of such architectural elements and building configurations as they are variously beheld and invoked, and their role as an archive, in constructions of Place and Identity.