History of Photography

India is a country so vast and diverse that it calls to mind the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Similarly, the task of describing the history of photography in India cannot follow only one vein, or it would present only a small part of the story. Thomas, therefore, divides and subdivides the subcontinent for his telling.

In his foreward to Thomas’s History of Photography in India 1840-1980, Arthur T. Gill, Hon. FRPS, Chairman Historical Group, Royal Photographic Society says:

… Our forbears laboured with their cumbersome apparatus and their formidable chemistry. We are enriched with modern miracles of technical perfection. Can we meet the challenge that our photographs can speak as potently today as so many of theirs did in time past; the communication from mind to mind?

How much more are we summoned to meet this challenge today than when Gill penned his words in October 1980? We can have a camera always at the ready, with versatile, lightweight lenses permanently affixed, with automatic settings that have been improved beyond those of our wildest imaginings just a few years ago. While history does not change, our view of it and our relationship to it does. So, if we believe we know the history, it bears rereading, whether to question the foundations on which we have built our current practice, or to stand more firmly still.

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