A detailed essay by one of the most important scholars of British Indian photography and longtime curator of the photograph collection at the India Office Library, John Falconer. The essay very nicely summarizes early photographic activity in India, and offers footnotes and references to make its case.

(From the essay)

'India presents to us perhaps as fine a field as any single country in the world. It contains a perfect specimen of all the minute varieties of Oriental Life; of Oriental Scenery, Oriental nations and Oriental manners, and it is open to us to explore these peculiarities to the last degree while enjoying a perfectly European security. There is a deep and growing interest now felt in Europe in every thing Indian...'

(Rev. Joseph Mullens, 1856)