Vendors and Shops

In India one sees them everywhere: bright wide-eyed Hindu deities, in poster form, perched above cash registers in restaurants and clothing shops, glued to the dashboards of taxis and buses, and framed on the walls of temples and home shrines. These mass-produced chromolithographs or "god-posters" occupy a central place in the visual landscape of modern India, but until recently they have remained far on the periphery of scholarly attention.

Vendors and shops from top to bottom: 

1. Print kiosk in Minakshi-Sundareshvara temple, Madurai (1982)
2. Gurubaran Framing Works, Radhakrishna Mutt Road, Mylapore, Chennai (1995)
3. Uma Picture Mart, Amman Sananthi Road, Madurai (2004)
4. Nalraj Joseph kiosk, N. Mada Street, Mylapore, Chennai (2000)
5. Sidewalk vendor, Jyotisar, Kurukshetra (2011)
6. Subhash Picture Publishers, Delhi (2010)