The introductory chapter in Henry Peach Robinson’s Pictorial Effect in Photography, from which the Pictorialist movement gets its name, states, “It has often been asserted that the artist, like the poet, is born, not made…” [1]
There are decades of writing which argue both for and against this assertion, but its premise clearly rings true in the case of Dhirajlal R. Mody. A mill worker in 20th-century Bombay, Dhirajlal left behind an artistic legacy so integral to the history of photography in India that it would seem a surprise to anyone that he had no formal training in working with a camera or developing film.
Born on November 7, 1910, in pre-independence India, Dhirajlal was an expert dyer at The Indian Bleaching and Dyeing Company, with a proficiency in chemistry and physics, and a passion for photography. He began taking photographs in 1938, with a Welta Perfecta Reflex Camera, capturing bulk of his images on a 6x6 cm twin lens reflex. The self-trained Dhirajlal also set up a makeshift darkroom at home to develop his photographs via bromide and chloro-bromide processing. Bromide processing was used primarily for enlargement, and was mixed with chloride processing to retain the deepness and richness of colour in enlarged images. The latter also lent the photographs positive archival properties through durability and lightfastness.
As he began photographing more, Dhirajlal connected with like-minded amateur photographers like A.J. Patel and N.G. Limaye to set up the Photographic Society of India (PSI) in Bombay in 1937. The objective of PSI was to take photography to the masses, giving them access to knowledge about the medium through lectures, workshops, competitions and exhibitions. In a departure from older forms of studio photography and ethnographic and journalistic usages of the medium, the group promoted the practice as a hobby to capture their daily lives and surroundings, and as a mode of artistic exploration. But given the expenses of the tools, its popularity still remained limited to those could afford cameras and film.
In his brief autobiography published in UNITED INDIA and USA Photographic Portfolios -- List of Members and Their Autobiographies, Dhirajlal mentioned that besides the PSI, there was another group called the CAMERAMBLERS, who were active at that time in disseminating information on photography. He credited both these groups for deepening his interest in the art form.
Dhirajlal also found a keen collaborator in his elder brother, Sumanlal Mody, who helped him develop photographs. Reflecting on their close relationship, Dhirajlal’s grandson, Tapan Mody, mentioned: “I would think that they were one photographer. Two people rolled into one.” Unfortunately, when Sumanlal passed away in 1954, the financial responsibilities of both families fell on Dhirajlal. A salaried mill worker, he gave up his art to dedicate all his time to his profession and stopping taking photographs. His brother’s passing also changed Dhirajlal as person, leaving him bereft of his chief ally and guiding light in photography.
As his talents fell silent, Dhirajlal was largely forgotten within the photographic networks he had nurtured. It is only in recent times that there has been renewed interest his work, when Tapan rediscovered his grandfather’s photographs and decided to digitize and archive them. Some of these images were put on public display at the exhibition Dada: An Accidental Pictorialist, curated by Veeranganakumari Solanki, and presented at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai, with the support of Tapan’s design and branding agency, Yes Yes Why Not?, from February 27 to March 16, 2025.
While “Dada” refers to the affectionate name Tapan used for his grandfather, the words “Accidentalist Pictorialist” in the title are worth probing further. While Dhirajlal never called himself a Pictorialist, there is no doubt a strong Pictorialist touch to his careful framing and subject composition. The Pictorialist movement emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to emphasize narrative and beauty over a hyper-accurate representation of reality in photography, that distinguished the medium as an artistic form and not just a means of documentation.
Dhirajlal photographed a variety of monuments, people and landscapes, seemingly ordinary at first glance, but captured with a sense of both magic and relatability. What stands out in most of these images is the attention to storytelling. In photographs such as “Zenana Outlook” and “Swimmer,” Dhirajlal uses light and shadow to draw the viewer towards the subject, often suspended between stillness and movement. In “To the Markets,” we see two women, labourers not unlike Dhirajlal himself, at the centre of the frame. The labour of the body, while quite different from the labour of the eye and the camera, finds a home in these photographs, mimicking, or perhaps mirroring Dhirajlal’s own experiences of working-class life. We begin to see ourselves in the people he photographed, almost as though the veil between viewer and subject is lifted. The subjects in Dhirajlal’s photographs change, but whether it be a family member, a friend or a stranger, they seem to all take on the role of the muse.
When coloured film became available in India in the 1950s, it was expensive and relatively inaccessible to the general public. However, Dhirajlal took to experimenting with colour in his own way, by tinting the film to highlight the subject composition. A closer look at his photograph “Snatch It” even reveals hand-drawn pencil outlines around the boy and the parrot, as a way to centre the viewer’s focus. Furthermore, the language he uses to caption and describe his photographs exhibits a sense of humour and directness, which imbues the work with a personable, whimsical quality.
Despite photographing during the tumultuous decades of India’s freedom struggle, we do not get a sense of the agitated nature of the times in Dhirajlal’s images. Instead, we see a gentler world, where the burdens carried by the body and its environments exist in the moment they are captured and live in that moment forever. In their stillness and beauty, these images seem to encapsulate Robinson’s idea of Pictorialism, where the mind interprets and recognizes each composition as melody, and feels it as such. [2] We are then afforded a vision both deeply rooted in the reality of a specific time, and yet moving beyond that to present a timeless appeal. Moreover, as he went about photographing different regions, sites and people across the country, Dhirajlal seems to have contributed to a quieter kind of nation-building, opening up its wealth and histories to its own people.
Dhirajlal was a quiet man, reserved and unassuming. While reflecting on his grandfather, Tapan also spoke about how Dada was a craftsman in more ways than one. On his way home from work,hewouldcarve pieces of chalk and even pencils into animals, musical instruments and temple pillars. He meticulously preserved these during his lifetime, but was particular that his things be left untouched and unseen. It was several years after his death in August 1990 that Tapan found this archive left in perfect condition.
Dada’s obsession with maintaining things in an orderly fashion also found its way into the precision with which he captured his images, focusing as much on the details as on the larger themes. It also shows the attention he paid to the tools of his craft. To that extent, he lived up to what Robinson states towards the end of Pictorial Effect in Photography: “Innate taste is not sufficient to make a painter or a photographer. As a poet has to learn the grammar of the language in which he writes, so must the artist learn the principles on which his work is based. If the student trust to that vague thing called taste, he trusts to a broken reed; let him rather endeavour to acquire that more certain and profitable culture which comes from study and practice.” [3]
Dhirajlal’s talent and inherent sense of curiosity in photography might have been his inciting and even driving force, but it was the extensive experience he developed through the study of the form with his compatriots which eventually shaped his practice and his standing in the field. While the Photographic Society of India still remains active, organizing regular workshops and exhibits, there is still much to learn about its early years and founding members. Tapan’s initiative, based on his family archive, is a valuable step towards rediscovering individual and institutional histories surrounding photography in India, and will hopefully pave the way for the opening up of more such collections.
This article would not have been possible without the help of Tapan Mody, Veeranganakumari Solanki and Open Call India.
Mekhala Singhal is a Mumbai-based writer and artist, with a background in sociology, politics and the arts.
Notes
[1] Henry Peach Robinson, Pictorial Effect in Photography: Being Hints on Composition and Chiaroscuro for Photographers (Piper & Carter, 1869), 9.
[2] Ibid., 29.
[3] Ibid., 187.