Allegory & Illusion: Early Portrait Photography from South Asia

Jan Van Alphen: Belgian Indologist, graduate of Ghent University, 1976.  Post-graduated in Mumbai on 'Natya Shastra'.  After anthropological research with the Gonds of Bastar (Madhya Pradesh) in the late 1970s, he became a Scientific Assistant at the Royal Museums for Art and History in Brussels.  The last twenty years he has been with the Ethnographic Museum of Antwerp, first as Curator of the Asia Department, and since 1995 as General Director.  He teaches Indian Art at the India Study Centre of the University of Antwerp and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.  He has organized several exhibitions on Indian and Buddhist topics.  Some of his accomplanying catalogues have become much appreciated works, such as Oriental Medicine in 1995 (published in 7 languages), Steps to Liberation, 2500 years of Jain Art and Religion in 2000, Buddhist Sculpture from the Grottoes of Longmen, China in 2001 and Cast for Eternity, Indian and Tibetan Bronzes in 2005.