The photography for this project included 35mm black-and-white images, 35mm color slides, and 16mm color film footage. Louise documented all three media in a notebook that is included in the archive. Our book Temple Potters of Puri (2012) published 268 black-and-white and color images and included a DVD holding a film edited from the digitized film footage. 

All the black-and-white negatives and color slides and the edited film on DVD are included in this archive. The original 16mm film footage is housed in the National Anthropological Film Collection (formerly the Human Studies Film Archives), National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC., HSFA.1984.08.

Louise Cort took the still images, both black-and-white and color, using two Olympus single lens reflex cameras. Cynthia Cunningham Cort filmed the 16mm color footage, using a Bolex windup movie camera. Fortunately, our research project in Puri coincided with the residence in Varanasi of Cynthia and her husband, John E. Cort (Louise’s brother), who were engaged in their own research projects while serving as monitors for the University of Wisconsin-Madison College Year in India program. During several visits to Puri, Cynthia filmed the production sequences for wheel-thrown and handmade pots of various sizes, the firing processes, and the delivery of fired pots to the Jagannath Temple kitchen. In Purna’s home, we filmed the partaking of the sacred food, mahaprasad, with the participation of his wife, Sureswari, their son, Bapi, and Sureswari’s younger sister, Kuni. We also filmed the events of the annual potters’ festival, Kurala Panchami.

For keeping both unused and exposed film safe from heat and humidity, we are grateful to the Southeast Railway Hotel (now the Chanakya BNR Hotel) in Puri for allowing us to store our film in the kitchen’s refrigerator. We appreciate the willingness of a number of friends and colleagues to carry exposed film back to the United States. Finally, we thank Prof. Joe Elder, University of Wisconsin-Madison, for receiving and holding the 16mm film until we returned to process it. Joe supervised creation of numerous films by his College Year in India students and inspired us to make our own.

Daniel Bailes, Mercury Productions, Washington DC, guided the editing and production of the film for the DVD.