Indian Encounters with Early Photography: Camera, Cannon, and the ‘Exhibitionary Complex’

Abstract: This paper explores early photography’s shifting status within the imperial culture of display, whose contents ranged from the fine arts to heavy artillery. In examining early photography’s wider role within Nowrojee and Merwanjee’s 1841 book, I explore its reception by Indian elites in the 1840s and 50s and consider how the British tried, with varying degrees of success, to manage the terms of Indian engagement with the new technology via the colonial control of photographic societies.