Dewan, Deepaliand and Deborah Hutton (Authors). Raja Deen Dayal, 2013 | Authored Book

The pathbreaking and prolific lensman Lala Deen Dayal (1884–1910), began his photographic career in the late 1860s. Trained as a draughtsman in the British colonial administration, he was originally involved in photographic documentation of territorial survey projects and similarly of the ‘natives’. In 1885, he was appointed court photographer to Mahboob Ali Khan, the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad, one of the wealthiest men in the world. This volume presents the work of this pioneering photographer. As the only court photographer in South Asian history, Deen Dayal is a link between an older tradition of court painters and the evolving scientific aesthetic of the new medium. Throughout his career he skilfully served both the colonial regime and the Indian elite. The Deen Dayal studios in Bombay, Indore and Secunderabad took thousands of photographs of superb quality, creating a unique archive. The Alkazi Collection of Photography holds a sizeable portion of this archive, many photographs from which richly illustrate this book.

Deborah Hutton is Associate Professor of Asian and Islamic Art history at The College of New Jersey. Her research is focused on examining the relationships between art, identity formation, and intercultural exchange at the princely courts that ruled over the Deccan region of India between the 16th and early 20th centuries. Deepali Dewan is the Curator of South Asian Visual Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Art, University of Toronto with an affiliation with the Centre for South Asian Studies.