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How photography helped the British empire classify India

Sudha G Tilak
News imageDAG Eleven Hindu Indian women in saris - described as nautch or dancing girls - pose outside a traditional house in this photograph taken by a European photographer somewhere in India in the early 20th century.DAG
Female dancers or nautch girls, early 20th Century. The photograph was taken by Edward Taurines, one of the first European photographers with a studio in Bombay (now Mumbai) which specialised in photographs showcasing the city for a Western audience.

In the second half of the 19th Century, photography became one of the British Empire's most persuasive instruments for knowing - and classifying - India.

A new exhibition - called Typecasting: Photographing the Peoples of India, 1855-1920, and organised by DAG, the Delhi-based art gallery - brings together nearly 200 rare photographs from a period when the camera was deployed to classify communities, fix identities and make India's complex social differences legible to the colonial government.

Spanning 65 years, the exhibition maps an expansive human geography: from Lepcha and Bhutia communities in the north-east to Afridis in the north-west; from Todas in the Nilgiris to Parsi and Gujarati elites in western India.

It also turns its gaze to those assigned to the lower rungs of the colonial social order - dancing girls, agricultural labourers, barbers and snake charmers.

These images did not merely document India's diversity; they actively shaped it, translating fluid, lived realities into apparently stable and knowable "types".

Curated by historian Sudeshna Guha, the exhibition centres on folios from The People of India, the influential eight-volume photographic survey published between 1868 and 1875. From this core, it expands outward 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 define the visual language of that time.

"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," says Ashish Anand, CEO of DAG.

Here's a selection of images from the exhibition:

News imageDAG Five Indian women wearing saris stand outside a modest house in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1890, balancing neatly stacked cow dung cakes on their heads while additional rounds lie arranged on the ground beside them. DAG
Women carrying cow dung cakes, Bombay, 1890, by Edward Taurines. Here, the women are presented in service to the household, engaged in domestic tasks typically performed within the home - but repositioned outdoors for the camera.
News imageDAG An Indian woman in a sari poses for a photograph taken by Felix Morin, published in 1890.DAG
Indian woman, photographed by Felix Morin, 1890. Women feature prominently in the photographs at the show. This carefully composed colonial-era portrait captures both the ethnographic gaze of the period and the formal elegance of early photography.
News imageDAG Four Afghan tribesmen, armed with guns and dressed in traditional attire, photographed in 1862. The group - Afridis from the Khyber Pass near Peshawar - stand posed before the camera. DAG
This 1862 photograph - 'Group of Afridis from the Khyber Pass' taken by Charles Shepherd - shows men from a Pathan tribe the British described as "fiercely independent" found along the Afghan border.
News imageDAG A street barber trims a man’s hair in a small vacant space in India. Both wear traditional dress - a sarong-type dress. A turban lies near a man. The photograph was taken by an unidentified photographer.DAG
A street barber, by an unidentified photographer. Such images frequently captured street trades and everyday performances, turning ordinary labour into ethnographic subjects.
News imageDAG Two high caste Hindu women in traditional saris pose on the steps of a house in Bombay in 1855 DAG
William Johnson, a founding member of the Photographic Society of Bombay, published this image titled 'Brahmani Ladies' in the 1857 issue of The Indian Amateur's Photographic Album. The accompanying text named the two women, describing them as young and intelligent, and noted that they were in Bombay - with their father's encouragement and their husbands' support - to study English at a mission school.
News imageDAG Five men of India's Parsee community, dressed in traditional attire and distinctive headgear, sit on chairs in a garden, with a colonial-style building rising behind them. DAG
A group of Parsis, possibly photographed by William Johnson, sit before a colonial bungalow - asserting their distinct identity through clothing and bearing, while occupying a colonial architectural world.
News imageDAG Four men and women belonging to north eastern India's Bhutia community pose in their traditional attire in this picture taken in 1890.DAG
A group of young Bhutias, 1890. The volume includes photographs of people from Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet - regions beyond the British rule. The Lepchas, Bhutias and Tibetans were photographed by Benjamin Simpson.
News imageDAG Eight Indian musicians pose outside a cave in India's Maharashtra, holding their traditional drums and pipes in this undated photograph. DAG
Musicians at ancient Buddhist rock-cut shrines in Maharashtra, photographed by Charles Scott, undated.
News imageDAG A husband, wife and daughter from India pose at an unidentified location in Singapore in the late 19th century, dressed in their traditional attire.DAG
An Indian family in Singapore, late 19th Century. Some images depict people from the Malay Peninsula, Singapore and Chittagong in Bangladesh.