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Photographer Lala Din Dayal captured rare images of the Taj, Sanchi, Ellora, and other Indian landmarks 150 years ago
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The Better India
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Photographer Lala Din Dayal captured rare images of the Taj, Sanchi, Ellora, and other Indian landmarks 150 years ago

Imagine India 150 years ago, before modern cities changed its landscapes and before photography became a widespread phenomenon. It was Lala Din Dayal's camera that recorded what existed at that time.

His journey began far from photography. Born into a family of jewelers, Dayal received training as a civil engineer in 1866 and started working as a surveyor and draftsman in Indore, where he first used photography to document lands.

By the mid-1870s, photography became his passion. In 1882, Dayal traveled across India with Sir Leopold Griffin, photographing monuments from the Taj Mahal to Sanchi and Ellora, during a period when European photographers dominated the region.

His photographs of Indian monuments were impressive and served as detailed visual testimonies to the country's architectural and archaeological heritage. He also documented landscapes, famine, major events, and people.

He once photographed the Bhopal railway station, capturing a steam locomotive cutting through the landscape. As India changed, Dayal's camera documented the nation's transformation under the influence of modernity.

Dayal's lens covered social strata: British officials, Indian Maharajas, royal ceremonies, women, and common citizens, as well as daily life. He navigated the complex world of power while simultaneously building a reputation unique to him.

The Nizam of Hyderabad recognized his talent. He appointed Dayal as a court photographer and bestowed upon him the title 'Raja Bahadur Musawwir Jung Bahadur' or 'Brave Warrior of Photography.'

Dayal was also an entrepreneur. His studios sold portraits and prints, employed dozens of people, and even managed a separate women's studio in Hyderabad, allowing women to be photographed in private settings.

Throughout his career, Dayal created an estimated 30,000 photographs. However, after his death, the archive he had been building for decades began to disappear. It is reported that thousands of his fragile glass plate negatives were sold as scrap metal.

Decades later, part of his legacy was saved. In 1989, IGNCA acquired 2,857 glass plate negatives from Dayal's studios, forming the largest repository of his work. These fragile plates have become windows into an India that no longer exists.

Raja Din Dayal photographed the past of India, capturing the country at the intersection of tradition and modernity, empire and princely rule. Through his camera, he also helped shape the perception of what India would look like.

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Eight Photographers Whose Work Captured Landmark Moments in Indian History from the Freedom Struggle to the Streets of Bombay
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Eight Photographers Whose Work Captured Landmark Moments in Indian History from the Freedom Struggle to the Streets of Bombay

For nearly a century, camera lenses across India have documented events related to revolutions, famine, deities, and slums. Eight photographers, working in Bombay and Delhi since the 1940s, transformed photojournalism into an art form, creating images that changed the understanding of India regarding themes such as independence, poverty, faith, and identity.

The history began in the 1940s when Homai Vyarawalla entered the profession, traditionally considered male, publishing her work under a male pseudonym. She traveled through Delhi, photographing Gandhi's funerals, Nehru's parliamentary sessions, and the attainment of independence in 1947, documenting the formation of a new free nation.

While Vyarawalla captured centers of power in Delhi, Sunil Janah documented the Bengal famine in 1943 for the Communist Party. His photographs reflected the images of starving villagers, violence during Partition, and industrial workers who were often ignored by newspapers.

Several years later, in Mysore, T.S. Sathyan chose not to focus on politics or tragedies. Joining the editorial staff of Deccan Herald Bangalore in 1948, and later working as a freelancer for Life and Time publications, he insisted that his true subjects were ordinary traders, farmers, and schoolchildren.

Raghu Rai, who grew up amidst such stories, joined The Statesman in 1965, and later became a member of Magnum Photos in 1977 upon invitation from Henri Cartier-Bresson. His 1984 works, taken during the Bhopal gas tragedy and depicting a buried child, became a somber testament to industrial disaster in photojournalism.

Rai was not alone in Bhopal; Pablo Bartolomeu, who was studying photography with his father, was there that day. At the age of twenty, Bartolomeu won the World Press Photo award for photos of drug addicts in 1975, and Bhopal earned him the title of Photo of the Year.

While Rai and Bartolomeu worked in black and white, capturing tragedies, Ragubir Singh chose color in the 1960s, a time when serious photography avoided it. His books 'River of Colour' and 'A Way into India' reinterpreted the country's streets, festivals, and rivers.

A generation after Ragubir Singh's color revolution, Dayanita Singh published 'Zakir Hussain' in 1986. She later left photojournalism, disillusioned by how editors exoticized India, and in 2017 created wooden structures at the Bhawan Museum, turning her photographs into portable exhibitions.

Around the same time, Sunita Taraporevala borrowed money from her Harvard roommate to buy her first camera in 1977. She spent years photographing Bombay's dwindling Parsi community, later releasing the book 'Parsis' in 2000 while simultaneously working on the Oscar-nominated screenplay 'Salaam Bombay!'

Vyarawalla's negatives from Delhi and Taraporevala's contact sheets from Bombay are now housed in museums and archives. Over eight decades, these photographers have changed India's self-perception. Perhaps today someone else is doing the same.

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