HistoriCity | Colonial lens to Republic’s viewfinder: Evolution of photography in India
Photography in India has evolved from a colonial tool of documentation and control to a medium reflecting the nation's complex social and political realities. Early images often reinforced imperial hierarchies, while later developments like studio photography, pictorialism, and photojournalism expanded access and expression. The work of photographers like Raghu Rai exemplifies photography’s role as a living archive of modern India. This evolution mirrors broader shifts in technology, society, and national identity.
- ▪Colonial-era photography in India was used as an instrument of governance and knowledge, often reflecting paternalistic and racist attitudes.
- ▪Photographers like Felice Beato staged scenes of conflict, blurring the line between documentation and theatrical re-enactment.
- ▪The arrival of the Kodak Brownie democratized photography, expanding participation to women and the urban middle class.
- ▪Raghu Rai’s work is regarded as a visual record of modern India, capturing both its public events and private silences.
- ▪Scholars have examined how photography in India shifted from a colonial curiosity to a medium of artistic and political expression.
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HistoriCity | Colonial lens to Republic’s viewfinder: Evolution of photography in IndiaSome colonial-era photographs did little, for instance, to conceal the paternalistic attitudes underpinning their productionPublished on: Apr 28, 2026 1:13 PM ISTBy Valay SinghShare viaCopy link Photographs only show a version of truth and objectivity, what gets in the frame is often as important as what is not. With the death of Raghu Rai, India lost not just a photographer, but a way of remembering itself. More than merely documentation; his photographs serve as an evolving archive of the Republic; its power and pageantry, and ruptures and silences. Ordinary, unrecorded life. That idea of photography as a long, accumulating record--almost a parallel history--sits at the heart of how the medium has evolved across the world, as also in India.Veteran photographer Raghu Rai’s photography is often described as a “visual record” of modern India. (Image sourced from NewsonAIR)Photography a Tool of PowerAs Europe entered the Age of Industrialisation, it was accompanied by a growing impulse 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’ often framed, patronisingly, as an effort to “bring light” to unfamiliar places. This mindset extended to the cataloguing of peoples, cultures, and natural environments encountered through colonial expansion. The camera proved to be an ideal tool for this project. Racism not only flowed as the gaze of the coloniser and imprinted itself indelibly both in the records of the colonial project as well as in the minds of the Indians who began intellectually crystallising their societies in unprecedented ways.Sudhir Mahadevan elaborates on this further 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, regularised photography as a source of knowledge and as an instrument of governance“. Researchers began to examine how photography was institutionalised as both a way of producing knowledge and a tool of governance within the British Empire.Some colonial-era photographs, such as those associated with figures like Maurice Vidal Portman Homfray, did little, for instance, to conceal the paternalistic attitudes underpinning their production. These images often staged or framed their subjects in ways that reinforced a narrative of European authority and benevolence, as Gaskell and Gujral note, casting the colonial figure as a civilising presence among supposedly “primitive” communities. Even where such intent was not explicitly stated, the visual language and accompanying captions frequently reproduced a saviour mentality, positioning the photographer or colonial agent as an enlightened intermediary rather than an embedded participant in a deeply unequal system. Some images such as those of the Madras famine of 1870s have been labelled ‘dehumanising’ today, Willoughby Wallace Hooper was present at Myanmar, Madras and other places arranging dead and dying children, women and men against imperial symbols be they buildings or execution ditches. His works were sold and collected as emaciated and famine-stricken Indians became ‘objects’ in the possession of the empire.Also Read: HistoriCity | Tamil Nadu: A Brief History from Presidency to…
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