Colonial Views of India

This new Ashmolean publication presents a discussion of colonial India, as seen in the 19th century photographs of Colonel Eugene Clutterbuck Impey, a British soldier and administrator who was a member of the East India Company. Offering sight into the past and highlighting the political purposes of ethnographic photography in the context of the British Empire.

Impey arrived in India in 1851 and took part in military actions during the Indian Uprising of 1857. After the British Crown took control in 1858 following the Uprising, he worked as a political agent and his photographs were often used to reinforce stereotypes with the aim to justify colonial efforts.

Colonial Views of India: Photographs by Eugene Clutterbuck Impey accompanies an exhibition of the same name on display in the Ashmolean Museum's Gallery 29, that opened on 11 April 2026. For more information about this new free exhibition, please click here.

Except for three very brief articles, published between the 1980s and 1990s, this will be the first book length publication to consider Impey’s images of 19th century India.

In the 19th century, photography and colonial ethnography were tools of British governance on the subcontinent. Colonial officers were asked to submit photographs on various subjects across India. Images of people, place and space was seen as useful surveillance documentation to observe, understand and control native communities. Eugene Clutterbuck Impey (1830-1904) arrived in India in 1851 and lived there until his retirement in 1878. He served as political agent at different posts across the country. The Eastern Art archives include over 250 negatives and photographs of Impey’s images of people, architectural sites, and landscapes.

Author Professor Mallica Kumbera Landrus is Keeper of the Eastern Art Department in the Ashmolean Museum, where the collections span more than 5,000 years of cultural and artistic development, from across Asia and parts of Africa. Her curatorial responsibilities are mainly in Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian art.

Contributors to this publication are Marwa Ahmed, Geoffrey Batchen, Radhica Ganapathy, Julia A. B. Hegewald, Aparna Kumar, Dane Kennedy, Nayanika Mathur, Tim Pearse, Chaitanya Sambrani, Giles Tillotson.