Dismantling the colonial frame | ‘Typecasting: Photographing the Peoples of India 1855-1920’ at DAG

The history of photography in India goes hand-in-hand with developments towards the modern science of anthropology. In the mid-19th century, colonial officers, army surgeons, missionaries, and government photographers lugged heavy cameras and fragile glass plates across towns, battlefronts, and mountain passes, in an effort to ‘objectively’ document the people of the country — for administration and governance.

But the objectivity is questionable. Working in makeshift camps and studio tents, they photographed men, women, and children as “types”: Brahmins and Bhils, traders and soldiers, frontier tribes and court performers. Under ambitious projects such as The People of India, which led to an eight-volume series compiled by John Forbes Watson and John William Kaye (published between 1868 and 1875), entire communities were turned into catalogue entries, their portraits paired with captions that judged character, behaviour, and social worth. (The volumes were produced after the 1857 uprising, when the British felt a need to “know” India.) The camera, marketed as neutral and objective, became one of colonialism’s most powerful bureaucratic tools.

The People of India cover
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy DAG

“Photographs by themselves don’t tell you they were made with a colonial gaze,” says historian Sudeshna Guha, who combed through the archives at DAG to curate an extensive exhibition of colonial-era photographs, titled Typecasting: Photographing the Peoples of India 1855-1920. “The typologies were created, not only by the British, but also through the information of the natives [what they shared about their caste, creed, occupation and trade]. Many photographs don’t have a background; so they appear divested from the cultural plane. That typologies are a construct — ours — is what I would like visitors to get.”

Manure dryers, Bombay; attributed to Edward Taurines
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy DAG

‘Making a type invisible’

Running parallel to the India Art Fair, Typecasting brings together nearly 200 rare photographs and photographic objects, including albumen and gelatin silver prints, cabinet cards, and postcards spanning an extraordinary geographic and communitarian range. The images span across tribes, ‘races’ and trades, such as the Lepchas and Bhutias of the Northeast, the Afridis of Khyber Pass in the northwest, and Todas in the Nilgiris in the south, along with wealthy Parsi and Gujarati families, dancing girls, coolies, barbers and snake charmers.

A Todamund (Nilgiris); by Samuel Bourne
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy DAG

At the heart of the exhibition is a rare selection of folios from The People of India, featuring the work of some of the best amateur photographers of the 19th century, including Benjamin Simpson, James Waterhouse, and John Burke, and also the lesser-known commercial studio Shepherd and Robertson. “The idea is to show the power and potential of a photograph to question typology,” says Guha. She points to the vignetted portraits of people from the Lepcha Bhutia tribe by Simpson in 1861-62. It was intended to be an authentic representation of the community, but was photographed in Darjeeling, and not Sikkim or Tibet.

Group of Young Bhutias, attributed to Fred Ahrle
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy DAG

An imprecise record

In an accompanying publication that includes essays by professors Ranu Roychoudhuri (Ahmedabad University), Suryanandini Narain (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and independent researcher Omar Khan, Guha expresses the ways in which all photographs taken at that time would have been composed, or “staged”, simply as a result of the constraints of the time. In the 19th century, photography was a physically demanding and technically fragile process.

Many early photographers worked with the wet collodion method, which required glass plates to be coated, exposed, and developed while still wet, so they were forced to carry portable darkrooms, chemicals, water, and light-proof tents wherever they went. Heat and humidity regularly destabilised chemical reactions, ruined negatives, and caused emulsions to peel or crack. Long exposure times meant subjects had to remain perfectly still, producing the stiff, posed look that became typical of ethnographic images.

Untitled (Portrait of a Native Woman); by Hurrychund Chintamon, Bombay
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy DAG

“The complaint amongst the British was always that you tell the native subject to stand, but the minute you’re going to click that photograph, he does something to go out of focus,” states Guha, “Samuel Borne complained about the fact that the dark face becomes so dark next to the sun, especially if the subject was also wearing a white pagdi.”

Kookie. Robber Tribes. Cachar (Assam); by Benjamin Simpson
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy DAG

Plates broke in transit, daylight faded too quickly, and monsoon conditions damaged equipment. Despite these obvious shortfalls, the finished photographs were presented as precise scientific records, masking the messy realities of climate, improvisation, and human negotiation that shaped every image. “The camera takes whatever is placed in front of it, and does not discriminate,” she adds. “So, in a way, photographs make a type invisible.”

Guha’s hope is that, over a century after the last of these images was taken, visitors will be able to train their own critical gaze onto these images, and consider not just what they ‘depict’, but the ambiguities they show. She has also included photographs by 19th century Indian photographer Darogha Abbas Ali, depicting the vibrant world of Lucknow’s dancing girls and royal performers, capturing a cultural scene that colonial photography often overlooked.

Brahmin Girls; by William Johnson
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy DAG

It’s also worth noting that despite the problematic colonial histories from which they emerged, each of the photographs in the exhibition is striking to look at, and could potentially open up whole new realms of historical enquiry. “More than anything, I am hoping that some bright young spark will think about this and realise there’s a lot more research to be done on this period,” concludes Guha.

Typecasting is on view at Bikaner House, New Delhi, till February 15.

The freelance writer and playwright is based in Mumbai.

Published – February 06, 2026 11:20 am IST