Barun Chattopadhyay

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA will facilitate research and analysis based on the portrayal and usage of paper in advertisements in Marg issues from 1946 to 1956. The research will look into paper as a product and the visual scheme applied to make it compatible with the central theme of the respective Issues in Marg. This project is in collaboration with the archives of The Marg Foundation, Mumbai, Maharashtra. Established in 1946 by novelist Mulk Raj Anand, Marg is India’s oldest continuously published art magazine. At a time when India was forging a new identity for itself, Marg sought to enrich the exercise by documenting the varied cultural traditions of India and presenting new ways of thinking about the future of independent India. Today, Marg continues to document the lesser-known histories of India and create inroads towards a critical understanding of the plurality of Indian and South Asian cultural practices. Barun Chattopadhyay is the Project Coordinator for this project.

Barun Chattopadhyay is a researcher, writer and paper-maker interested in natural farming of fibres used in making papers. Barun completed his PhD thesis in Bengali on Rabindranath Tagore’s Religion of Man in 2010 from the University of Calcutta. He has taught Bengali language and literature in various colleges for six years. He is also developing a special mode of teaching literature to blind students. He has training in video editing from Roopkala Kendro, Kolkata and has been part of multiple fiction and non-fiction film projects. He regularly writes book-reviews, fiction and short plays in Bengali. He has received a fellowship from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to work on Tagore’s only film script The Child. He has been the recipient of a senior research fellowship from Centre for Cultural Resources and Training, Ministry of Culture (CCRT), Government of India. Given his research interest, artistic practice and work experience, Barun is best suited to be Project Coordinator for this Foundation Project of IFA.

Focussing on the collection of the Marg magazines from 1946 to 1956, the Project Coordinator will research and analyse the portrayal of paper as a product in the advertisements of the magazines, the visual scheme applied as well as the different kinds of paper used to make it compatible with the central theme of the respective Issues. At the onset, the Project Coordinator will study the relevant Issues of Marg. It is crucial to note here that the premise of this project and research is reliant on working with the tangible physical copies of Marg Magazines, in order to understand the way each advertisement of paper as a product was laid out, assembled and bound together, making the advertisements an integral part of the visual and thematic content of the specific Marg Issues. Therefore, Barun will be relying on the archives at The Marg Foundation and will also procure physical copies of these Issues from various other sources. In addition, the Project Coordinator through fieldwork and extended archival research hopes to explore any remnants of the network of printers, paper manufacturers, and advertisers. 

Barun has divided the 15 months of the project term into six phases, dedicating the first two months towards a thorough study of the digital archives of Marg to identify relevant articles, illustration, photographs, advertisement and comb through the archives to identify the people who were central to their production. In the second phase of four months, the Project Coordinator will sort, index and classify all the content related to “paper.” Following this, the next three months will be spent to devise an arrangement of the materials, which will be the first step towards creation of the artist book. In the fourth phase, Barun will formulate the draft of the publication in tandem with the exhibition. In the next phase, the exhibition and the publication will be finalised for its execution in the final stage. This project in collaboration with the archives of The Marg Foundation is an attempt to engage with an archival collection through creative intervention, offering newer entry points into this rich archive of publications, taking it beyond the realms of its existing subscribers and readership.

The outcomes of the project will be 100 copies of an artist book and an exhibition. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA along with the final reports will be the artist book along with texts, samples of paper-materials generated as part of the project, a manuscript, materials and elements, mainly papers and auxiliary objects which will emerge from making of the book, the documentation of the exhibition and a dossier of the ephemera related to the exhibition. Additionally, the Project Coordinator will submit audiotapes of the interaction with different people during the course of the project.

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.

This project is made possible with support from Tata Trusts.