Photography Arrives in India

1840

Imported daguerreotype cameras go on sale in India from January 1840, a few months after their introduction in Europe in 1839, and the technology finds use among amateurs as well as official institutions. Photography is also taken up by rulers of princely states in India, with the photograph gradually replacing painting as the official mode of portraiture in the princely courts. The establishment of photo studios managed by Indian photographers, alongside British establishments, the addition of photography as a subject of learning and the foundation of photographic societies in major cities in the 1850s further democratises access to photography in the subcontinent.

Bibliography

Gaskell, Nathaniel, and Diva Gujral. Photography in India: A Visual History from the 1850s to the Present. Munich: Prestel, 2018.

Lavedrine, Bertrand, Jean Paul Gandolfo, and John McElhone. Photographs of the Past: Process and Preservation. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2009.

Pinney, Christopher. The Coming of Photography in India. London: British Library, 2008.

Siddhartha Ghosh. “Early Photography in Calcutta.” Marg 41 no. 4 (1990): 35–50.