skyA new exhibition in India’s capital Delhi showcases a wealth of early photographs of the country’s monuments.
These photographs from the 1850s and 1860s capture a time of experimentation when new technologies met the unknown.
British India was the first country outside Europe to establish professional photography studios, and many of its early photographers became internationally renowned. (Photography was born in 1839.)
They blended and transformed pictorial conventions, introduced new artistic traditions, and shaped the visual tastes of audiences ranging from scholars to tourists.
While the work of leading British photographers often reflects a colonial perspective, the work of Indian contemporaries reveals overlooked interactions with this narrative.
The images in the exhibition titled “The Making of History” were collected from the archives of the leading art company DAG. They highlight the key role of photography in shaping understandings of Indian history.
They also contributed to the development of field science, nurturing intellectual networks and linking disciplines such as political history, fieldwork and archaeology.
“These images capture a moment in history when the British Empire consolidated power in India, and documenting the subcontinent’s monuments was both a means of asserting control and a way to showcase the empire’s achievements to a European audience,” said Ashish Anand, CEO of DAG.
skyThis is a photograph of the Elephant Island Caves by William Johnson and William Henderson.
The caves are a group of temples in Maharashtra, primarily dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, and are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
William Johnson began his photographic career around 1852 in Bombay (now Bombay), working as a daguerreotype – an early photographic process in which a photograph was made on a metal plate Produce a single image.
In the mid-1850s, Johnson partnered with Bombay commercial studio owner William Henderson to form the firm of Johnson & Henderson.
Together they produced The Amateur Photography of India, a monthly series published from 1856 to 1858.
skyIn 1839, 17-year-old Linnaeus Tripe arrived in India to join the East India Company’s Madras Regiment.
He began practicing photography and in December 1854 he took photographs in the towns of Halebidu, Belur and Shravanabelagola.
Sixty-eight of these photographs (mainly of temples) were exhibited at an exhibition in Madras (the main city now known as Chennai) in 1855 and earned him first place in the “Best Photographic Landscape Series on Paper” medal.
In 1857, Tripp became a photographer in the Madras Presidency (a former British Indian province), photographing Srirangam, Tiruchirappalli, Madurai, Pudukottai and Thanjavur attractions.
More than 50 of the photos were exhibited at the Madras Photographic Society exhibition the following year and were widely praised as the best exhibits.
skyJohn Murray, a surgeon with the Indian Medical Service in Bengal, began photographing in India in the late 1840s.
In 1848 he was appointed civil surgeon of the city of Agra, and over the next 20 years he conducted a series of studies of Mughal architecture in Agra and the neighboring cities of Sikandra and Delhi.
In 1864, he created a complete set of images documenting the iconic Taj Mahal.
Throughout his career, Murray used paper negatives and carotypes (a technique for creating “positive” prints from negatives) to create images.
skyThomas Biggs arrived in India in 1842 and joined the British East India Company’s Bombay Artillery as a captain.
He soon took up photography and in 1854 became a founding member of the Bombay Photographic Society.
After exhibiting his work at the Society’s first exhibition in January 1855, he was appointed government photographer at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Bombay, responsible for documenting architectural and archaeological sites.
He photographed Bijapur, Badami, Aihole, Pattadakal, Dharwad and Mysore before being recalled to military service in December 1855.
Biggs experimented with the carotype printing process, using a negative to create a “positive” photograph.
skyFelice Beato, one of the most famous war and travel photographers of the 19th century, arrived in India in 1858 to document the aftermath of the 1857 Rebellion.
Indian soldiers, known as “Seppo”, started a rebellion against British rule, often referred to as the First War of Independence.
Although the rebellion was nearing its end when Beato arrived, he photographed its aftermath with an emphasis on capturing the immediacy of the events.
He documented extensively cities affected by the uprising, including Lucknow, Delhi and Kanpur, including famous photographs of Sikandar Bagh, Kashmir Gate and Kanpur Army Cantonment. His gruesome photographs of hanging sepoys stand out for their stark depictions.
As a commercial photographer, Bitto aimed to sell his work widely and spent more than two years photographing iconic sites in India. In 1860, Beato left India for China to film the Second Opium War.
skyAndrew Neill is a Scottish doctor with the Indian Medical Service in Madras and a photographer documenting ancient monuments for the Rashtrapati Bhavan in Mumbai.
His Caro prints were exhibited at the Madras Photographic Society exhibition in 1855, and 20 of his architectural views of Mysore and Bellary were exhibited at the Bengal Photographic Society in March 1857.
Neil also documented Lucknow after the 1857 uprising.
skyEdmund Lyon, who served in the British Army from 1845 to 1854 and was briefly warden of the Dublin District Military Prison, arrived in India in 1865 and established a photography practice in the southern city of Ooty room.
Lyon worked as a commercial photographer until 1869, and he gained significant recognition, particularly for his photographs of the Nilgiris Mountains, which were exhibited at the 1867 Paris Exposition.
Lyon, accompanied by his wife Anne Grace, also captured archaeological sites and architectural antiquities in southern India.
His work is a wonderful collection of 300 photographs documenting the sites of Trichinopoli, Madurai, Tanjore, Halebid, Bellary and Vijayanagara
skySamuel Bourne’s stunning photographs of India, especially those from his Himalayan expeditions between 1863 and 1866, are among the finest examples of 19th-century travel photography. A former bank clerk, Byrne quit his job in 1857 to pursue photography full-time.
In 1863, he arrived in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and soon moved to Shimla, where he established the Howard & Bourne studio in partnership with William Howard.
Later that year, they were joined by Charles Shepherd to form “Howard, Byrne and Shepherd”. After Howard left, the studio was renamed “Bourne & Shepherd”, a name that would become iconic.
Byrne embarked on three major Himalayan expeditions, covering vast areas including Kashmir and the challenging terrain of Spiti. His photo taken in 1866 manilon passReaching an altitude of over 18,600 feet (5,669m), it has won international acclaim.
In 1870 Bourne returned to England and sold his shares, but Bourne & Shepherd continued to operate in Calcutta and Simla. The studio later documented the spectacular Delhi Durbar (the “Indian Court” of 1911), when 20,000 soldiers marched or rode past the emperor and empress in silk robes. extraordinary legacy.
