Picturing a Photographer: Organizing, Digitizing, & Inventorying the Archive of Mazher Master (1920-1977)

This thesis explores the photographic archive of Mazher Master (1920-1977), a photographer active in India, Pakistan, and Canada from ca. 1940. Master worked in a wide variety of photographic formats including 35 mm and medium format in both black and white and colour. He created many types of images including art, press, commercial, and personal images. Master’s archive is currently being considered for acquisition by the Royal Ontario Museum, and I spent the last year helping to facilitate this by organizing, digitizing, and inventorying the largest part of the archive. In this thesis, I briefly summarize Master’s biography, explain my process for working with the archive, and describe the archive in detail. This thesis is supplemented with images from the archive and appendices that provide greater depth of information.