The Imperial Aesthetic: British Photography and the Indian Peoples in the post-Mutiny era

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Although there is still a considerable amount of scholarly debate as to its causes and consequences, the ‘Mutiny’ of 1857–1858 undoubtedly changed British attitudes towards the Indian subcontinent. The direct aftermath in the 1860s and 1870s is particularly significant, as it follows the India Act of 1858, which represented a new approach to British colonial rule: a new vision of India and its peoples. The British were starting to see things in a new way, and photography played no small role in this development. Samuel Bourne (1834-1912) is one of the best well-known Victorian English commercial photographers to have worked in British India, where he sojourned from 1863 to 1870. Soon after his arrival he started a business with the experienced photographer Charles Shepherd. Within a few years, the firm Bourne & Shepherd became recognised as being a directing influence over British-Indian photography. Their work provides a valuable tool to evaluate the Victorian representations of India, the setting of a colonial mind. This talk will explore the relationship between colonial ethnography and photography, and will reflect on the balance between aesthetic, cultural, and political considerations in the aftermath of the ‘Mutiny’.

Dr Xavier Guégan is Senior Lecturer in Colonial and Postcolonial History at the University of Winchester. He researches, publishes, and lectures on South Asian history under British rule and North African history under French rule, including imperial culture and ideologies, comparative studies, as well as on violence and anti-colonial resistance, and the correlation between photography and history. His books include The British Abroad since the Eighteenth Century (co-edited) and most recently The Imperial Aesthetic: Photography, Samuel Bourne and the Indian Peoples in the post-Mutiny era (Brill, 2026).

Chairs: Dr Graciela Iglesias-Rogers (University of Winchester)  Prof Chris Aldous (University of Winchester)

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