In The Photograph is Proof, photographer and curator Anusha Yadav traced how photographs of Indian crimes were made, captioned, circulated and preserved—and how those choices shaped what later viewers believed. The project was commissioned for FORMAT International Photography Festival and shown in Mumbai in 2017. Its photographs are records of particular moments and uses; they do not, on their own, establish guilt.
What was The Photograph is Proof?
Yadav’s project was an archival investigation into evidence photography in India across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. FORMAT commissioned the work for its festival in Derby, England. It was later exhibited at Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai as part of Access Time and the FOCUS Photography Festival. Chemould Prescott Road later described it as an archival-detective project based on historical forensic photography from the subcontinent. These are events from 2017, not a notice of a current exhibition. Chemould Prescott Road’s retrospective biography mentions the project and its exhibition context.
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The work began with the Indian Art Studio in Mumbai. Scroll’s 2017 feature describes the studio as a century old at that time and reports that four generations of its photographer-owners had served as evidence photographers for police, courts, individuals and organisations. Yadav also examined collections and records at the Nehru Memorial Library, the British Library and the National Archives of India. Her conversations included criminal lawyers, reporters, press photographers, detectives and forensic specialists.
That breadth matters: the project considers not just images produced for investigation, but also what happens to crime photographs when they enter archives, newspapers and public memory. Yadav put her interest plainly: “I like the stories, not necessarily the technique when it comes to photography.”
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Which crimes and photographs does the project revisit?
Scroll’s account presents the images as parts of several histories rather than as a catalogue of mysteries solved by photography. They span almost a century, and each example raises different questions about purpose, caption and circulation.
| Case or episode | What the feature reports | What to notice |
|---|---|---|
| Amherst Street murder, 1868 | The feature identifies the murder of Rose Brown as the first case documented for forensic purposes and links it to the establishment of the Calcutta Police Detective Department. | This “first” claim is the feature’s account; it should not be treated as an independently established general fact. The example points to the emerging use of photographs in police investigation. |
| Alipore (Manicktola) Bomb Case, 1908–1909 | The project includes archival photographs of accused people, including one captioned “Aurobindo Ghose the alleged leader.” | The caption’s word “alleged” is part of how the image frames its subject. A portrait and its label are not a verdict. |
| Jim Scott stabbing, circa 1937 | The feature discusses an image connected to the stabbing of Bombay police officer Jim Scott. | The approximate date and the image’s later archival setting are part of its interpretation, not incidental details. |
| Nanavati–Prem Ahuja case, 1959–60 | The feature examines the murder and its tabloid coverage, arguing that Blitz’s presentation of forensic photographs and of Sylvia Nanavati shaped public perception. | Here, the press image is part of the story: the way crime photography was presented to readers contributed to the case’s public meaning. |
The examples and interpretations in the table follow Scroll’s feature and its image captions; they are not a controlled comparison of forensic practice across cases. The FORMAT catalogue also situates evidence photography within purposes broader than legal proof, questioning the historical expectation that a photograph offers an objective record.
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What can a crime photograph actually prove?
A photograph can record that something was in front of a camera at a particular moment, but interpreting what it records depends on more than the visible image. For Yadav, a crucial set of questions is: when was the photograph made, who made it, and how was it later used or appropriated?
- Purpose: Was the image made for police or court records, for publication, or for another reason? The intended use affects what was photographed and why.
- Provenance: Where did the image come from, and how is its path into an archive known? An image detached from that history is harder to interpret responsibly.
- Caption and framing: Labels, cropping and presentation can influence what a viewer thinks an image shows. The Alipore portrait’s “alleged leader” caption, for example, is part of the record a viewer encounters.
- Circulation and absence: A photograph’s movement into newspapers or public archives can shape memory. Equally, what was not photographed—or what has not survived—limits the story an image collection can tell.
These questions do not amount to a general legal rule, and the project does not establish that any one photograph independently proves a person’s guilt. It instead makes the image’s making and afterlife visible as part of the evidence a viewer must assess.
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Why does the project treat archives as part of the story?
Yadav described the tension between public interest and the original audience for these images: “For me the individual stories are important, especially since these are in the public domain, but not necessarily meant for the public.” Making an old photograph visible again does not make it neutral. Its earlier purpose, its caption and its later audience all shape how it is read.
The project’s title invokes photography’s claim to proof, but its method asks viewers to look beyond that claim. A photograph can preserve a trace of an investigation, a press narrative or an institution’s way of seeing. It can also acquire a new meaning when a later archive or exhibition places it beside other records. The FORMAT catalogue discusses the historical belief in photography as an objective record while locating evidence images within these wider uses.
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Scroll’s feature also invokes a camera metaphor attributed to Weegee in the 1958 record Famous Photographers Tell How: “It’s like a modern Aladdin’s lamp, you rub it, you push the button and it gives you the things you want.” In Yadav’s project, that promise of getting what one wants from a camera sits alongside a harder question: what did the photographer, investigator, newspaper or later viewer want the image to show?
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Where can readers find the project’s original context?
- Paroma Mukherjee’s Scroll feature, published 9 March 2017, reports on Yadav’s research, the cases and the project’s interpretation of the images.
- Chemould Prescott Road’s artist biography retrospectively mentions The Photograph is Proof and its exhibition context.
- Anusha Yadav’s photography page provides artist information and general print-enquiry details; it does not establish that prints from this specific project are available.
- FORMAT’s catalogue for The Photograph is Proof / The Memory Company places the project within the festival context and discusses photography’s claim to objectivity.
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