From 1827 to 2027: Exhibition traces 200 years of analogue photography

In 2027, photography approaches its historic bicentennial milestone. To mark the occasion, Museo Camera has a new exhibition, which is an ode to photography’s pioneers, practitioners and living masters whose images shaped India’s visual memory. Touching Light: A Prelude to the Bicentennial of Photography (1827–2027), currently running in Gurugram, pays tribute to the practice of analogue photography. Curated by Aditya Arya, this is the first exhibition in India that traces the journey of analogue photography across more than 150 years, from the earliest archives to contemporary practice.

“Touching Light is an ode to the pioneers and contemporary masters of photography whose vision and craft have shaped India’s visual history. This exhibition is both a celebration and a reminder of analogue photography’s lasting beauty and significance as we approach 200 years of the medium,” said Aditya Arya, Founding Director of Museo Camera.

Photography enthusiasts can delight in rare 19th-century treasures on view — Albumen prints from the ‘People of India’ series (1850s–1860s), Carte de Visite from Bourne & Shepherd Studio (1860s) and the ‘Beauties of Lucknow’ series attributed to Darogah Abbas Ali (1874). These archival treasures from Museo Camera/India Photo Archive are presented alongside analogue silver prints, chemigrams and diapositives by 28 contemporary Indian photographers.

Pradeep Chandra’s photography journey began with an excitement to create a print at his home darkroom with an 8-frame Kodak Sure Shot. While still in school, his photo of Waheeda Rehman made its way to Filmfare. Over the years, his career evolved through various newspapers. For over 50 years, Avinash Pasricha has passionately documented India’s performing artists, capturing the country’s cultural scene in New Delhi. His work began in 1966 when new fast films allowed him to shoot stage performances by available light, a discovery that led to his lifelong quest for the “mood picture”. “In the analogue era, each frame had a cost, was a meditation of scarcity. The limited frames taught me to wait and to truly ‘see,’” recalled photojournalist Bandeep Singh.

After four years of hustling as a rookie, self-taught photographer Fawzan Husain got his first break at Mid Day, where he truly found his footing in documentary photography. This journey led to eight exhibitions and three books. Artist-turned-photographer Harbans Mody’s grooming began at the College of Art, Delhi. After a career as an Art Director for JWT in Paris, photography became his passion. “I would capture images with my ‘Magic Box,’ waiting with ‘palpable tension’ for films to be processed,” he said.

Internationally acclaimed photographer with over four decades of experience, Hardev Singh, began with a gifted Yashica camera. Featured among the top seven architectural photographers globally, his career flourished through a 35-year collaboration with a renowned luxury hotel group. “In this world of instant everything, I believe analogue photography is a gentle reminder of the beauty of slowness. It teaches you to wait, rewarding your patience with a sublime pleasure of delayed gratification and unanticipated surprise,” said Akash Das.

Mala Mukherjee was barely 12 when her father bought her a Mamiya VI camera. Photography became a passion, and she started freelancing in 1986. Her photograph of the tied cricket test match in Chennai attained iconic status, and her photo of the NatWest Tower in flames got an award. Her work on the Jantar Mantars of India also got rave reviews. “Analogue photography’s deliberate pace cultivates the vital ability to see the world with clarity. The tangible print was the photograph, imparting an ‘enveloping softness’ and an ‘intangible’ quality to images, teaching craft, visualisation and patience,” said Mahesh Bhatt.

Neeraj Priyadarshi has spent 25 years capturing and telling stories of riots, rural distress, calamities and Bollywood’s hidden world. His acclaimed analogue work is exhibited globally, including at the Kiyosato Museum in Japan. Parthiv Shah’s journey in photography began with his father’s Pentax cameras. “In those days, every frame mattered. The slow, deliberate process of shooting and the magical darkroom processing taught me to value each image,” he said.

Serena Chopra’s analogue journey began with a vintage trusty Olympus film camera. She returned to analogue photography two and a half decades ago, working with medium format Hasselblad, with 120 Roll film, black and white. “Every shot meant effort and risk, but the magic of analogue made it worthwhile,” she exclaimed.

As a woman navigating a traditionally male-dominated field in her early work in fashion photography, Sumiko Nanda found strength in analogue’s discipline, using it to articulate a unique visual language grounded in texture, contrast and emotion. Since 2019, Jayant Shaw has undertaken an experimental venture with his handmade wooden box camera. “The slowness of this unhurried technique is a difficult challenge. My project aims to make human portraits in today’s fast world using this box camera,” he explained.

The exhibition will run at Museo Camera, Gurugram, till September 29.