A Zamindár's house at Nagar before 1895

Frederick Saint John Gore made this print of a Zamindár's house at Nagar. In this landscape the house of the Zamindar, the local landlord, emerges, rooted within its specific time and place. The image is mediated through Gore’s perspective as a colonial administrator and an artist, and serves as a window into the lives of the landed gentry in British India. The house represents both power and the weight of tradition. Simultaneously, we can consider the people whose labor and lives were bound to the Zamindars, a relationship of power and economic disparity. The landscape holds their stories too, the untold narratives of those who lived in the shadows of such houses. The image invites us to reflect on the complex layers of identity and history embedded within seemingly simple scenes. It prompts us to consider whose stories are told and whose are left out.