Meet Lala Deen Dayal, a photographer who immortalised British viceroys and maharajas
photographer named Lala Deen Dayal took a picture of Frederick Temple-Blackwood, First Marquess of Dufferin and Ava. The men were in Shimla, in the foothills of the Himalayas, because the British colonial government in India moved there every summer to escape the heat of Kolkata.
Dufferin was the British viceroy, and Dayal, who had worked as a surveyor for the colonial government before leaving to pursue his passion as a freelancer, was his official photographer.
Dayal posed Dufferin, a short, balding, goateed, intelligent-looking man, at the center of the photo, behind a round table covered in a patterned cloth. To either side of him sit three other men, all seven constituting the Supreme Council of Government of India.
Beneath them is an enormous, intricately patterned carpet; behind them, a nondescript curtain and rough wooden walls. They look like what they were: fresh conquerors who hadn't yet built themselves palaces.
They also look pretty discomfited by the camera in what were still its early days.
Two look at the viceroy, who leans aside to deliver some incidental remark; one gazes at the floor; two stare stiffly into nowhere; and only one councilor, like a faint glimmer of self-awareness within the raj, peers suspiciously into the lens.
The photograph became one of a deep file of stock images available in Dayal's shop. One souvenir album, assembled by an unidentified purchaser and later broken apart, was partially acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2016.
