A question of gaze | 'Typecasting: Photographing the Peoples of India 1855–1920' at DAG

At Bikaner House in Delhi this winter, photography does not merely hang on walls — it stares back, questions its own gaze, and compels viewers to confront the authority and afterlife of the image. Typecasting: Photographing the Peoples of India 1855–1920 — an exhibition curated by historian Sudeshna Guha and presented by Delhi Art Gallery (DAG), is among the most rigorous exhibitions on early Indian photography to be staged in the country.

Spanning nearly 65 years and bringing together close to 200 rare photographs and related material, the exhibition (Jan 30 – Feb 15) confronts a question that feels sharply contemporary: how did photography help manufacture the idea of social and racial “types” in India, and why do these visual categories persist in subtle, insidious ways?

“Typecasting brings critical scrutiny to the histories and errors of type-making, and makes available historical photographs for reflection on the systems of classification and typologies created in the colonial period — typologies that photography made appear real and natural,” explains Guha.

Walking through the exhibition, one is immediately struck by the expansive geographic and social sweep it attempts to map. From Lepcha and Bhutia communities of the northeast to the Afridis of Sind in the northwest; from the Todas of the Nilgiris to affluent Parsee and Gujarati merchants; from colonial elites to dancing girls, coolies, barbers and snake charmers — India unfolds here as an archive of faces, costumes and professions.

Compelling and troubling

Yet this is no celebration of diversity. Instead, Typecasting makes explicit that early ethnographic photography was never neutral. It did not simply record difference; it actively produced it. At the core of the exhibition are folios from The People of India, the monumental eight-volume photographic series compiled by John Forbes Watson and John William Kaye between 1868 and 1875.

Conceived in the aftermath of the 1857 uprising, the project was deeply entangled with colonial governance. Produced with contributions from pioneering photographers such as Benjamin Simpson, James Waterhouse, William Willoughby Hooper and John Burke, alongside the commercial firm Shepherd and Robertson, the volumes attempted a comprehensive visual taxonomy of the subcontinent.

Seen today, these images are both compelling and deeply troubling: faces arranged as evidence, bodies framed as data, identities fixed into categories assumed to be stable and knowable.

The exhibition extends beyond this canonical project to include albumen and silver-gelatin prints by eminent photographers such as Samuel Bourne, Charles Shepherd, Darogha Abbas Ali, and others. Together, these works span the period from 1855 to 1920. Displayed through prints, cabinet cards, postcards, albums and books, the material reveals how the camera came to be seen as scientific proof — capable of rendering social hierarchies visible and seemingly immutable.

“The 1850s were a decade of incredible change in India,” notes Ashish Anand, CEO and Managing Director of DAG, situating this photographic moment within a larger historical shift. “It marked the first collective call for action against colonial oppression, the transfer of power from the East India Company to the British Crown, and the arrival of photography alongside the beginnings of modern anthropological study. The camera swiftly became the primary instrument of investigation, the means by which representatives of the subcontinent’s innumerable communities were captured for analysis and classification.”

Some pride, some prejudice

The social consequences of this visual regime are never far from view. As Anand observes, looking back today makes it “obvious that this process was problematic on many levels.” Race, caste, occupation and region were flattened into visual shorthand that often reinforced colonial prejudice and administrative convenience rather than lived reality.

Particularly compelling are sections devoted to domestic life and popular imagery. Photographs of colonial households reveal not only Indian subjects but also the biases of those who staged and framed them. Meanwhile, the images of nautch girls — later examined in depth in Omar Khan’s accompanying essay — expose how postcards circulated voyeuristic fantasies of Indian femininity across the globe, transforming women into objects of consumption far removed from their social worlds.

Ultimately, Typecasting refuses nostalgia. In an age when images circulate in nanoseconds,  and categories once again threaten to harden into stereotypes, this exhibition feels both deeply historical and uncannily present — demanding time, attention and ethical engagement.