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colonial photography

Who Took the Dehumanising Photographs of the Madras Famine?

Willoughby Wallace Hooper is the photographer identified with the Madras famine image series of 1876–78, including photographs later reproduced as engravings in The Graphic.

By ThatPainter Team 2 min read
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Willoughby Wallace Hooper, a British military officer and photographer, is the photographer identified with the Madras famine image series discussed in the reporting. The photographs are associated with the famine of 1876–78. Because no individual image was supplied here, this attribution applies to the documented series rather than proving that every surviving reproduction has been independently catalogued.

Who was Willoughby Wallace Hooper?

Hooper was a British military officer who made photographs in colonial India. Sujaan Mukherjee’s 2017 article in Scroll.in identifies him as the photographer of images showing people affected by the Madras famine. The same account says he contributed more than 450 ethnographic photographs to The People of India and later worked with George Western in a photographic studio.

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An institutional photography account describes an example famine photograph as dating to circa 1876–78, the period generally associated with the Madras famine.

What makes the images ethically disturbing?

The reported photographs were not all made in one kind of setting. Descriptions include outdoor scenes, relief camps and semi-studio arrangements. Mukherjee argues that the staging, poses and captions can turn people experiencing famine into arranged colonial subjects rather than presenting them simply as individuals seeking relief. That is an interpretation of the images’ production and presentation, not a neutral archival label.

A contemporary account reported later

Mukherjee also relays an account attributed to The Times of India. In that reported passage, Hooper selected seven people for a photograph when the light was poor, said he would return the next morning, and reportedly found that all seven had died overnight. The wording should be understood as Mukherjee’s quotation of the newspaper account; the original issue of The Times of India has not been independently checked here.

“He [Hooper] one evening selected seven persons whom he wished to photograph,” The Times of India reported, “but the light not being favourable he said he would come in the morning and photograph them. The next morning he came, and found that they had all died during the night.”

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Photographs and engravings are not the same object

Hooper’s photographs also had a separate print circulation. The Graphic published engravings based on famine photographs in its issue of October 6, 1877, including images captioned “Forsaken” and “The last of the herd.” An engraving made for a newspaper or magazine is therefore a later printed interpretation of a photograph, not the original photographic object.

Object What the evidence supports
Photograph Attributed to Willoughby Wallace Hooper in the reporting on the famine-image series.
Engraving Published in The Graphic on October 6, 1877, based on famine photographs.
Private or commercial circulation Zahid R. Chaudhary’s Afterimage of Empire, cited by Mukherjee, is used to suggest that Hooper’s photographs were sold commercially and circulated in private albums.
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How certain is the attribution for a particular image?

The strongest answer to the general question is Hooper. However, an unspecified scan, caption or online reproduction cannot automatically be treated as a fully verified original. The available reporting connects the series to Hooper and to 1876–78, but it does not provide an independently accessible primary catalogue record for every individual image. Check the caption, provenance and collection record when identifying a specific reproduction.

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