Photographs only show one version of truth and objectivity, what comes into the frame is often as important as what is not. With Raghu Rai’s demise, India lost not just a photographer but a way of remembering itself. More than just documentation; His photographs serve as an evolving archive of the republic; Its power and spectacle, and brokenness and silences. Ordinary, unwritten life. The idea of photography as a long, accumulated record – almost a parallel history – underlies how the medium has evolved around the world and also in India.
photography power tool
As Europe entered the age of industrialization, along with it came a growing desire to observe, classify, and impose order on the world. This, as Nathaniel Gaskell and Diva Gujral point out in Photography in India: A Visual History from the 1850s to the Present, was an ‘urge’ that was often framed patronizingly, as an attempt to “bring light” to unfamiliar places. This mindset extended to cataloging the people, cultures, and natural environments encountered during colonial expansion. The camera proved to be an ideal tool for this project. Racism not only caught the eye of the colonizers and became indelibly imprinted on the records of the colonial project but also in the minds of Indians, who began to intellectually crystallize their societies in unprecedented ways.
Sudhir Mahadevan has explained this in detail in ‘Archives and Origins: The Material and Vernacular Cultures of Photography in India’. He writes that by the 1990s, “scholars turned their attention to the discursive parameters that, under British rule, regulated photography as a source of knowledge and an instrument of governance”. Researchers began to examine how photography was institutionalized within the British Empire as a way of producing knowledge and a tool of governance.
For example, some colonial-era photographs, such as those associated with figures such as Maurice Vidal Portman Homfray, did little to disguise the patriarchal attitudes that underpinned their production. These images often staged or framed their subjects in a way that reinforced the narrative of European authority and benevolence, as Gaskell and Gujral note, presenting the colonial image as a civilizing presence among supposedly “primitive” communities. Even where such intent was not explicitly stated, the visual language and accompanying captions often reproduced a savior mentality, positioning the photographer or colonial agent as an enlightened arbiter rather than a participant embedded in a deeply unequal system. Some of the images today are labeled ‘inhumane’, such as the Madras famine of the 1870s. Willoughby Wallace Hooper was present in Myanmar, Madras and elsewhere arranging dead and dying children, women and men against imperial symbols, be they buildings or execution trenches. His works were sold and collected as emaciated and famine-stricken Indians became ‘commodities’ in the possession of the empire.
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However, it would be redundant to view them all equally; James Waterhouse advanced cartography and astronomical photography, while John Marshall helped shape archaeological photography globally. Marshall’s work, in particular, reflects a depth of engagement that at times exceeded the boundaries of the colonial framework within which he worked.
Photography arrived in India
Photography reached India as soon as the invention was announced in Europe. By 1839, it was already being discussed at the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, and the Bombay Times published a detailed description of the process developed by the French artist and photographer Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. It was rapidly adopted by the British to document and classify the communities they ruled; First under the East India Company and later under Crown rule in the period after the Rebellion of 1857. Even when not explicitly intended as imperial propaganda, photography became deeply embedded in and instrumental to the colonial enterprise.
The first decades of the camera in India, as Gayatri Sinha points out in her edited volume “Points of View: Defining Moments of Photography in India”, saw the rise of the photo studio. This period also saw efforts to visually memorialize the events of 1857, as well as the arrival of traveling photographers from abroad. Among the most fascinating figures was Felice Beato, often considered one of the earliest war photographers. Beato approached the medium with a dramatic sensibility, sometimes staging or recreating scenes of violence, using human remains as stark, disturbing props, creating images that blurred the line between documentation and dramatic re-enactment.
Yes. Early scholarship by Thomas, Ray Desmond, and others focused on establishing timelines, key dates, and broader changes in the development of the medium. These works were largely descriptive, focused on documenting, cataloging, and recording the early trajectory of photography.
Mahadevan points to another rich source of information, “Newspaper advertisements from publications such as Bengal Hurkaru and The Friend of India offer a glimpse of how photography first entered everyday life in colonial India. Import companies such as Thacker, Spink & Co. sold an eclectic mix of European goods – cheese, cutlery, clothing, wine, books and novelty items as well as photographic goods – within the growing consumer market for colonial residents. Marketed devices. In this context, photography initially appeared less as a serious medium and more as a curiosity: a scientific novelty or even a toy.” The availability of cameras with everyday objects, although still expensive, underlines how fluid and undefined the state of photography was in the early years; Not yet circulating as an art or discipline, but as part of a broader culture of imported curiosities.
New trends emerged
By the end of the nineteenth century, the dominance of Picturesque was giving way to Pictorialism, a style that emphasized the crafted image over mere mechanical capture, and encouraged photographers to see themselves as artists. In India, one of its leading practitioners was the Bombay-based photographer Shapoor Bhedwar, whose soft-focus, carefully staged studio portraits echoed the dramatic sensibilities of British pioneer Henry Peach Robinson. Sheepherder’s membership in the Linked Ring reflects his involvement in international photographic debates around art and science. By the mid-twentieth century, pictorialism had spread beyond elite practitioners to include amateur photographers across India.
At the same time, portrait photography was expanding rapidly. While studios had existed in port cities such as Bombay, Madras and Calcutta since the 1840s, the turn of the century saw increasing demand from Indian clients eager to claim status through photographic likenesses. Earlier paintings largely served colonial officials, business elites and royalty: groups who could use costume, pose and setting to project authority even within the constraints of colonial rule. Over time, as cameras became more accessible, the practice spread to the urban middle class and eventually to small towns.
While studio photography often relied on finesse, the “Scenes of India” genre established itself as a more reliable visual record of the subcontinent’s landscape and built environment. These images were carefully crafted, yet framed as objective, and circulated widely, shaping how India was viewed both within and outside its borders. The field attracted a diverse group of practitioners: figures such as John Murray, Abbas Ali (famous for his work in Lucknow), John Edward Sache, William Baker and John Burke were active in northern India. In Bengal, Satyajit Ray’s father Sukumar Ray became a pioneer in photography after returning from England, where he trained in photography and lithography. In the south, Linnaeus Tripp documented the Madras Presidency, and Raja Deen Dayal emerged as one of the most accomplished Indian photographers of the period, working extensively from Secunderabad and Bombay.
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Gayatri Sinha sees the beginning of the twentieth century as a formative moment in the emergence of photojournalism in India. He argues that the increasing presence of crowd images in newspapers disrupted earlier colonial visual regimes that had framed Indians as static, typologized subjects. In contrast, these new photographic representations captured movement, assembly, and collective presence, offering a more dynamic and politically charged visual language.
The eventual arrival of the Kodak Brownie, introduced by Eastman Kodak, marked a decisive shift in making photography accessible to the broader public. As the company actively attracted new users, women emerged as a key target audience, with the camera energetically marketed to them as both a practical tool and a leisure tool, helping to broaden participation in photography beyond its earlier, more niche areas.
Author Valay Singh’s Historicity is a news column about a city based on its documented history, mythology and archaeological excavations. The views expressed are personal.
Author Valay Singh’s Historicity is a news column about a city based on its documented history, mythology and archaeological excavations. The views expressed are personal.
