Includes bibliographical references (pages 168-171)

CONTENTS: Introduction ; the colonial eye: under canvas and within compounds -- 'Fixing' the subject -- A raja's realm -- A performative space -- the photograph and its accoutrements -- Glass-plate negatives in bullock carts -- Parda and a poniard -- Shooting the sublime -- The empire and an aficionado -- Through a prism darkly -- Theatre of war -- Sites of past conflict -- A sky of inky tint -- A racy counter-narrative -- Postcards from home - - Panoply of the raj -- Imaging india: reading the pose - - Ephemeral encounters -- Cameras in the classroom -- A grand old man -- Tales of an elephant and a mule -- Imaging the other --A child widow's story -- A dancer in the darkroom -- Ways of engaging -- Sacred spaces -- Views behind the veil -- Memorializing the mahatma -- A monsoon of hatred and despair -- An iconic observer -- Histories on the wall -- The 'second creature' �Readings.

Not much is known about how the coming of photography changed visual discourse or affected people's lives. Divided into two sections, illustrated with archival photographs, looks at the camera in the colonial era and in post-independent India. Europeans in India-of whom the British were the largest in number-were the initial users of the photographic studio. Early studio images of the sahib-civil servant, lawyer, tea planter, missionary, and so on-are among the first available visuals. The events of 1857 marked a watershed in photography in India. By this time, as the urban middle classes started patronizing photographic studios, these became instrumental in fracturing notions of space and visibility. The second section looks at some such moments, and studio photographs initially focused on the new Indian professional-the doctor, lawyer, engineer, and civil servant-and then with wife and children. It moves on to the emergence of the emancipated Indian woman, the horror of Partition, and finally to independent India.