Jean Baptiste Oscar Mallitte was a French photographer working in India in the 1800s. Around 1877, while working as an official photographer for the British colonial government, he photographed an indigo plantation in Allahabad, India. He documented aspects of the planting and manufacture of indigo, as well as the dynamic between British colonial rulers and Indian subjects.
How can we begin to understand the context of these photographs and other colonial-era photography? In colonized societies around the world, cameras were used by colonial rulers as instruments of power, and the imagery was largely controlled and staged. The subjects had little to no agency—no say in how they were depicted. What we know is that Indian farmers were forced to cultivate indigo rather than food, because indigo was such a valuable commodity for the British colonial government. There were thousands of indigo factories throughout India, and farmers made no profit themselves, often never emerging from debt owed to plantation owners. These images, although staged and controlled, give us a glimpse of that brutal reality.