: en attente de publication ( Oxford University Press)

I would be the last one to deny the interest of studying images and of discussing their possible impact on ways of seeing in India in certain areas of religious and political life. But I would also like to insist that , in spite of their obvious proliferation , images are not the only significant element of the visual environment. It may be true that in certain cases, our eyes may be trained by how we are used to looking at images ; but it may also be that, in other cases, it is precisely the opposite which is true and that we may look at images in the way we have been trained by looking at other things. Whether one should consider such a possibility seriously and what it may imply for the study of visual practices in India, is what I would like to consider briefly now on the basis of my research in the bazaars of Old-Delhi (Vidal 2000, 2003, 2005