During the latter half of the 19th century, photography emerged as a potent tool for the British Empire to understand—and categorize—India.
A new exhibition, “Typecasting: Photographing the Peoples of India, 1855-1920,” organized by DAG, the Delhi-based art gallery, presents nearly 200 rare photographs from a period when the camera was used to classify communities, define identities, and render India’s complex social differences comprehensible to the colonial government.
Spanning 65 years, the exhibition charts an expansive human geography: from the Lepcha and Bhutia communities in the northeast to the Afridis in the northwest; from the Todas in the Nilgiris to Parsi and Gujarati elites in western India.
It also focuses on those relegated to the lower strata of the colonial social order, including dancing girls, agricultural laborers, barbers, and snake charmers.
These images did more than just document India’s diversity; they actively shaped it, transforming fluid, lived realities into seemingly fixed and knowable “types.”
Curated by historian Sudeshna Guha, the exhibition is centered around folios from “The People of India,” the influential eight-volume photographic survey published between 1868 and 1875. From this foundation, it expands to include albumen and silver-gelatin prints by photographers such as Samuel Bourne, Lala Deen Dayal, John Burke, and the studio Shepherd & Robertson—practitioners whose images helped establish the visual language of that era.
“Taken together, this material tells the history of ethnographic photography and its effect on the British administration and the Indian population, in a project which in size and depth has never before been seen in India,” states Ashish Anand, CEO of DAG.
Here’s a selection of images from the exhibition:
John Williams, from Aston, says the picture shows the importance of photographers.
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