Mahatma in a single frame

respect, Gandhi didn’t wear sandals for a year. That explains the difference, but his desire to be photographed in the same manner remained,” said A Annamalai, director of the National Gandhi Museum, which has, in its collection, over 7000 photographs of Gandhi.

Gandhi was also keeping track of his published photographs and news mentions across the world. A payment receipt of a hefty £110 dated June 15, 1900, from Woolgar & Roberts’ Press Cutting and General Information Agency in London in Gandhi’s name, confirms his subscription to press notice clippings for a year. In the 1920s, during the Rowlatt Act satyagraha, Non Cooperation movement and the Bardoli satyagraha, local photographers were making hundreds of photos of non violent protests, marches and public meetings. What the international press wanted to see was Gandhi in private.

Swiss photojournalist, Walter Bosshard, was commissioned to travel across India by the German magazine,

in 1930 to cover the social unrest and photograph Gandhi. “I have sworn to never pose for a photographer! Try your luck, perhaps it might even turn out well,” Gandhi told Bosshard when he met him. In Bosshard’s book, published in 1931, there is mention of this conversation — possibly the first written record of Gandhi’s now changed relationship with the camera. The posed, studio portrait was now a thing of the past. A day after Gandhi broke the Salt law in Dandi on April 6, 1930, Bosshard made some endearing photographs of him.

“In this relaxed atmosphere of Gandhi with his followers, Bosshard recorded Gandhi drinking soup, shaving, laughing at a satirical report in and speaking on the act of spinning with his closest confidantes,” said Gayatri Sinha, who co-curated an exhibition of Bosshard’s photographs of Gandhi and Mao Zedong last year at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Delhi.

In the late 1930s, Gandhi’s grandnephew Kanu Gandhi began photographing the Mahatma extensively. He was given access, but on the condition of not using a flash, or having Gandhi pose. By this time, Gandhi was also signing his photographs for auctioning, so that money raised could be used for the Harijan movement. he [Gandhi] would say, the floor price is two rupees,” writes Ramachandra Guha in