Lala Deen Dayal

by Dr Sushma Griffin, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Getty Scholars Program, Getty Research Institute (2021–22 academic year)

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Although considered one of the most influential Indian photographers in the global history of nineteenth-century photography, Lala Deen Dayal’s portraiture practice is surprisingly underexamined, receiving only cursory acknowledgment and little sustained attention. The discovery of prints of miniature paintings of Mughal rulers in his personal archives at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi enables critical insights into the development of Dayal’s photographic aesthetics. These prints reveal that Deen Dayal was using Indian kingly iconography and Indigenous portraiture conventions as a way of thinking through the interface between Indian painting and colonial photography. Situated at the intersection of Indigenous and colonial portraiture, these images of Indian rulers draw the longer history of Indian portraiture traditions into dialogue with photography and modernity.

 

These princely portraits articulate not only India’s racial, ethnic, and geographical diversity, but also Deen Dayal’s significant itinerancy and efforts at documenting a vivid historical and social Indigenous narrative. In this assemblage, rulers belonging to smaller and lesser-known geographical regions such as the ‘Thakore Sahib(s)’ of Palitana and Dhrol are featured alongside the Maharajas of the larger kingdoms of Jammu and Kashmir, and Kutch. Although regarded as colonial subjects, and pictured with colonial military medals, the agency of the Indian princes is expressed in their attentive stance and direct gaze. Importantly, what emerges from these portraits is the confidence of the sitters.

 

The intricate matrix of staged cross-cultural objects and materials impart a semiotic valence to the images: books, drapery, and ornaments on a fireplace ensure the portraits’ familiarity for the colonial gaze, while the Indian apparel, jewellery, and ceremonial swords are a straightforward display of Indigenous wealth, perceived as resources to be mobilised for colonial profit. The compositional space of each image is configured around three points of focus: each sitter is flanked by two objects, mostly a table (or in the case of Jammu and Kashmir a fireplace) and a throne, except in the example of the seated Palitana who is posed in front of a painted backdrop. These artfully constructed interior spaces demonstrate Deen Dayal’s adept skills at studio photography.  

 

The trope of the throne is a central theme of these princely portraits. Implying a connection between the disparate realms of India and Britain, this symbol of kingship reminds us of the longer history of Indian thrones such as the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan’s Peacock Throne (commissioned for his coronation in 1628 and now in the national treasury of the Central Bank of Iran in Tehran) and Tipu Sultan’s Tiger Throne dismantled after his defeat to the English East India Company in the battle of Seringapatam in 1799. In the context of the new colonial rule, the thrones in the photographs signal the pervasive uncertainty of the post-1857 Indian Insurrection (also known as the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’) environment, at which time most Indian princes and rulers had to pledge their loyalty to the British Crown. Structured through a dialogue between Indian and colonial aesthetics, these princely portraits are statements of agency and beauty, working to conceal the political precarity of post-Mutiny India.