Page 423 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

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military and administrative purposes. When the Archeological Survey Office was set
up by the Government of India in 1861 several photographers were assigned
temporarily; among them were also Indian photographers Harichand Chintamon, P.C
Mukherjee, Shibshankar Narayen, Mukund Ramchandra and Lala Dindayal. 8
Only the rich and educated people practiced photography, as it is a very expensive and
elegant medium. Photography came within the grasp of common people during 1880-
90. The foreigners were not only the first practitioners of photography in the
subcontinent, they were also the first to conduct photographic experiments. Important
books in this regard are Photography in India During Nineteenth Century and
Victorian India in Focus by Ray Desmond and The Last Empire - Photography in
British India (1855-1911) by Clark Warswick and Ainsley Ambrey. G. Thomas, a
photographer from Bangalore, wrote History of Photography in India (1840-1980). 9
No credible information about the first Bengali photographer has been found.
However, the name of a Bengali artist was recorded in a calendar of Calcutta in 1856. 10
‘Photographic Society of Bengal’was set up on January 2, 1856. One-third of its hundred
members were Bengali. Rajendra Lala Mitra was the honorary secretary and treasurer of
this association. Pratapchandra Sinha, Shyamcharan Mallik, Madhabchandra Basak,
Gourchandra Basak, Haridas Dutt, Girishchandra Ghosh, Priyanath Sheth, Gourdas
Basak, Kanailal Dey, Govindracharan Das, Kumar Kalikumar Roy Mallik, Radha Kumar
Basak and Doyalchand Basak were involved in this organization. When the British
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cancelled the membership of Rajendra Lala Mitra in 1857 due to political reasons, almost
all Indian members resigned from the association.
The first photography exhibition of Kolkata was held in March 1857. Seventeen out
of 38 photographers were Bengali and they displayed 295 photographs. In 1854
12
‘School of Industrial Arts’ (later Government Art College) was set up in Kolkata. In
around 1862-63 five pupils learned photography here as a supplementary subject.
Among the people who played an important role in the diffusion and development of
photography in undivided Bengal during the 19th and beginning of 20th century are
Maharaj Prodyot Coomar Tagore, Nawab Khwaza Ahsanullah, Nawab Khwaza
Salimullah, Hiralal Sen, Birchandra Deb Barman Manikya, Jagadish Chandra Bose,
Hemendranath Bose, Upendrakishore Raychaudhuri, Sukumar Ray, Saratchandra Ray,
Ramananda Chatterjee and others.
The first color photograph was taken in 1861 by James Clerk Maxwell. August
Lumiere and Louis Lumiere of France created autochrome plate, an easy way to take
color photographs, in their factory in 1907. A few years before this invention Father
Lafeaux and Prodyot Coomar Tagore already exhibited color photographs with the aid
of a ‘Chromoscope’ in Kolkata in the years 1898 and 1899 respectively. The first
Bengali who took color photographs with the aid of autochromes is Hemendra Mohon
Bose, in 1912. He also took photos of Rabindranath Tagore. Arya Kumar Chaudhuri
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also held an exhibition of his own color photos in 1914. Color photography and its
use in newspapers began first in Dhaka in the decade of the 1960s.
Correct information about who took the first photograph in independent Bangladesh