Beginning in 1863, India’s First Commercial Photographic Business Landmark is a History Now 

Datanews India Feature

Kolkata, June 8, 2024: The British era undivided India’s first footfall of commercial photographic business Bourne & Shepherd has rolled into history following its collapse in 2016 but legacy continues.

Bourne and Shepherd was established in Shimla and Calcutta just 26 years after the discovery of Daguerreotype in 1837 by the French inventor Louis Dauguerre. Interestingly, one of the sign-plates kept in the Calcutta studio premises of Bourne and Shepherd says it was established in 1840.

This means the operators of this studio, before coming to India and setting up the studios in Shimla and Calcutta must have been into the artistry and photographic business. This clearly indicates that the operators of Bourne and Shepherd were engaged into the business when Daguerreotype was just at its initial phase. 

In 1863 when the studio was set up in Shimla by Samuel Bourne, Charles Shepherd and William Howard, it was named as Howard, Bourne and Shepherd. After Howard left the business and India, it was renamed as Bourne and Shepherd.

The company, also opening a studio in Calcutta, is marked by its stupendous success thus paving the way of further commercialization of photographic business in India.    

When a Miracle Happens with the Company   

Miracles do happen and it happened with Bourne & Shepherd     too!

A few months before the death Ramkrishna Paramhansa in 1886, A. C. Daw, an apprentice photographer of the company visited Dakshineshwar’s Kali Temple in Calcutta to take his photographs.

Ramkrishna was unwilling!

But Swami Vivekananda, his chief disciple, insisted for a photo-session.

Enthusiastic Daw took one photograph of Ramkrishna and went back to the company’s office at Calcutta’s Esplanade office of to develop it. But the glass-negative fell from his hands.

Strangely, a semi-circle was created around Ramkrishna’s head. Lo, it looked like a halo!

Call it a miracle?

The Legacy of Bourne & Shepherd

Bourne and Shepherd is India’s oldest repository of photographs of all kinds. This is the best place to know how people wore their dresses a century and half back, how Nautch girls or dancers looked and how kings and Nawabs dressed themselves in the olden days.

The company is interwoven with the Indian film industry. The film makers like Satyajit Roy stepped into its heritage building to research on the dresses that Muslim Nawabs and Zaminders wore in Oudh at the time of “Gadar”—the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Through the photographs preserved at its archive, he devised the dress materials for the royal characters of “Shatranj Ke Khiladi” (1977).

Years later, his son Sandip Roy also came at this “time capsule” of India’s photographic-past to make a tryst with what Kolkata was in the Europeans days to shoot his Bengali thriller Gorosthaney Sabdhan (Beware at a Burial Ground): based on the famous fiction of his father. 

Sandeep knew he could get the scenic details of Calcutta of the past for that film, from the “photographic frames” taken by photographers of the company in 1880 from the top of the Ochterlony Monument located in metropolis’s very famous Maidan.

Actress Suchitra Sen, Moon Moon Sen, Uttam Kumar, Slumitra Chatterjee, Utpal Dutta and all other film actors visited here regularly.  Bengali film directors like Hrithik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Hrikesh Mukherjee and Tapan Sinha thronged here regularly for researches for their films. 

Entering into a Time Capsule…………

Bourne & Shepherd, a capsule where time stands imprisoned and frozen, captured memorable moments for the past. The company’s red brick made Victorian Era building was visited by Rabindra Nath Tagore and all others connected with the Bengali renaissance.

Celebrities of all hues throng here regularly to make trysts with the colonial times of the British Raj, days of Rajas-Sultans-Maharajas-Nawabs, Nautch girls, faqirs and Sadhus, dreaded Thugs, fascinating snake-charmers and everything of Hindustan of yester era!

Famous Bengali novelist Sunil Gangopadhyaya regularly visited this iconic building to write his book Sei Momoi: “Those Days”. Sunil needed references of the days of the Bengal’s colonial past— those intoxicating days of Jalsaghars where Bengali Babus held regular “Jalsa” to enjoy dances and classical music of Tawaifs blended with wine and intoxicating scents of Ketaki-Gulab-Juhi-Chameli to create the atmosphere of a perfect “Sham-e-Mehfil”.

Anybody working on a novel or doing a commercial film of those-times, have to come here to watch photographs to follow the styles of dress, hair style, buildings, interior decoration, designs of ornaments, weaponry and of utensils and cutleries.

If you are making a film on Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Oudh, you possibly cannot create a town-scene of Cawnpore, Varanasi or Lucknow of those days, without looking at the photographic collections treasured at this building.

The Cambridge University Library, British Library (India Office Collection), National Portrait Gallery, National Geographic Society and Smithsonian Institute possess some archaic photographs of Bourne & Shepherd.

Interwoven with Indian film industry, in 1900, the company launched its first processing laboratory in association with Mumbai’s Clifton & Company. Having branches in Mumbai, Shimla, Agra, Lahore and Calcutta, it showed silent-era films also by partnering with Barker Motion Picture Company, Fox Films and International Newsreel Corporations.

It rented out a large number of photographic instruments to film makers of Mumbai and Cacutta.

Making a tryst with Pundalik the country’s first fiction-film, Bourne & Shepherd made a bold presence in the celluloid world of Mumbai and Kolkata. All photographic instruments for Pundalik’s making were supplied by it.

On May 18, 1912, Pundalik was screened at Coronation Cinematography in Mumbai.

Witnessing Hindustan’s Capital Transfer  

On questioning what was the first biggest political event of the British India, most of Hindustanis may fail to answer but it was the shift of capital from Calcutta to Delhi in 1911.

Thanks to politicians, we Indians have short historical memories.

Patankar and Hiralal Sen of Bourne & Shepherd, a Marathi and a Bengali respectively, were the first photographers to shoot scenes of the Delhi Durbar.

On February 6, 1991, a fire destroyed the building’s treasure trove!

It was global news!

All glass negatives, from 1848 till 1945, were destroyed. This was India’s biggest photographic loss!!

 Photographs: All photographs credited to Dataphoto