The daguerreotype, the first practical photographic process, arrived in South Asia in 1839, the same year that the French government made the technology public in Europe (Chaudhary 4). By the 1850s, photography was prevalent among interested South Asian elites who engaged with the practice and treatises of photography in various ways. A review of popular media and current scholarship on South Asian photography reveals a disproportionate focus on British photographic conventions and a relative lack of discussion of South Asian artists’ role in the practice of photography in South Asia. This analysis will compare directionality and background in self-portraits by South Asian photographers, contemporaneous portraits by South Asian court painters, and typologies by British photographers. Analyzing directionality and background in relation to social and political contexts reveals that these three categories of artists worked with different intentions and levels of autonomy in representing South Asian subjects. 

A self-portrait taken by king of Tripura and patron of the arts Maharaja Bir Chandra Manikya with Maharani Monmohini reflects how South Asian artists used photography as a means of self-representation, not a recreation of British art. This silver gelatin print, made circa 1880, is popularly described as the “first selfie” in South Asia (Dsouza). The background of the Maharaja’s self-portrait resembles bourgeois domestic interiors which were standard in British studio portraits of the upper class. Popular news outlets position this resemblance alongside descriptions of Bir Chandra Manikya’s affinity for British governance, which he demonstrated through political reforms and urban planning (“The story of Maharaja Bir Chandra Manikya”). Some of the most accessible writing on the Maharaja’s self-portrait associates his interest in photography and use of British visual vocabulary with his replication of British political practices. This framework neglects the Maharaja’s personal intentions in taking his self-portrait.

However, directionality illustrates that the Maharaja intended for his self-portrait to serve a different purpose than British studio portraits. Bir Chandra Manikya and Maharani Monmohini face the camera, departing from the Mughal tradition of royal portraits in profile (Aitken 25-59). They gaze directly toward the viewer, differing from the European convention of upper-class subjects staring beyond the frame from a three-quarter profile (Grant). Their intimate physical contact makes this a “scandalous” image that was saved for personal use and would not have been circulated in Europe or South Asia (Grant). The directionality that the Maharaja chose for this portrait indicates that he selected certain visual vocabulary to communicate his own personal message.
 

Certain case studies of contemporaneous painted portraits of South Asian elites used visual vocabulary found in European photography, and political traditions in royal portraiture suggest that these British conventions served a political purpose. In court painter Chotu’s circa 1870 watercolor, ink, and gold portrait, the Maharaja Sardar Singh of Bikaner is the first in his dynasty to face the viewer directly–differing from profile views which were most common throughout the Mughal period (Aitken 27) Preparatory sketches of Bikaner elites by Chotu’s father Rahim, like the circa 1860-1870 portrait of “Mamdu,” show the three-quarter view, as well as curtained landscape backgrounds (Aitken 32)). These formal elements  of directionality and background were also used in the cartes de visite, a popular form for photographs of European royalty. 
 

For centuries, painted portraits were given as gifts between Mughals and Europeans to cement their allegiances (Aitken 37). Court painters’ incorporation of conventionally European backgrounds and directionality could be used to support the argument that treatises of British photography were applied automatically to South Asian portraiture as a result of colonization. However, considering the political and cultural contexts of South Asian court painting before and after colonization suggests that South Asian portrait artists chose to include British photographic conventions for a specific purpose. 

A circa 1920 self-portrait of photographer Annapurna Dutta offers a different perspective of South Asian self-representation. Dutta stands at a three-quarter view and looks beyond the frame, resembling European portraits of upper-class men which signalled connection to the public sphere (Grant; Sengupta) ). Kevin Grant, a specialist in nineteenth- and twentieth-century photography identified this print as a cabinet card, which situates this image in a transnational genre of portraits that photographers would use to advertise their work (Grant). This specialist also argued that the camera was too far away for Dutta to have used a remote shutter release, meaning that, contrary to captions by previous owner Siddhartha Ghosh, she could not have taken the portrait herself (Sengupta; Ghosh 48). Although the image is not technically a self-portrait and was likely private because it was taken before Dutta began taking photographs professionally, it reflects the way in which Dutta wanted to be seen: as a skilled photographer. She engaged in a common genre of photography alongside, not after or separately from, British photographers.    
 

Ethnographers John Forbes Watson and John William Kaye published a portrait of a member of the Kuki tribe, an ethnic group residing in present-day Northeast India, in a book of photographic typologies titled The People of India (Watson and Kaye 229). Photobooks such as these were common ways for British scholars to present their views, often inaccurate or staged, of different ethnic groups under the empire. 
 

Like Dutta, Watson and Kaye used a standardized three-quarter directionality and blank background, as well as physical markers — clothing and camera, respectively — of the subject’s identity. While Dutta likely arranged her own image for private use, the anonymous typology subject had little control over the representation of their group. The British photographer likely selected clothing for the typology that they thought represented the Kuki people regardless of accuracy (Grant). Dutta’s portrait is a testament to individual skill while the typology is an artifact of British ethnography which stereotyped individuals into symbols. Although Dutta’s self-portrait bears stylistic resemblance to Watson and Kaye’s typologies, the disparate contexts of these photographs reveal a stark difference in the autonomy of South Asian subjects. 
 

This comparison of self-photographed, painted, and ethnographic portraits of South Asian subjects was limited by unequal access to primary source material and secondary research on South Asian photography. The disproportionate representation of British photographers in scholarship on photography in South Asia may have contributed to a pervasive interpretation of the available South Asian photography and contemporaneous painted portraiture as mere interactions with British conventions. The limited accessibility and understanding of South Asian photographs in current scholarship and popular writing indicates that the preservation of artifacts may significantly impact how these artifacts are interpreted. 
 

Recognizing South Asian artists’ agency in photographic and painted portraiture is essential to understanding the history of South Asian photography under British colonial rule. The popular description of South Asian photographs as artifacts of British technological transmission fails to differentiate the purpose of their production from that of British ethnographic portraiture. Photography and photographic conventions in South Asian portraiture are testaments to royal patrons’ personal and political intentions as well as South Asian photographers’ autonomy over their image.