‘I'm Both An Insider And An Outsider'

WRITER AND HISTORIAN WILLIAM DALRYMPLE RETURNS TO HIS FIRST LOVE—PHOTOGRAPHY—AND REVEALS WHY AFTER 30 YEARS OF TRAVEL INDIA STILL SURPRISES HIM.

- Bhavya Dore

Three years ago William Dalrymple began travelling across India to chart the ruin of the Mughal empire and the rise of the East India Company. Following in the steps of Mughal emperor Shah Alam, the central character of his book The Anarchy, Dalrymple visited battlefields, mosques, ruins, palaces and barracks across Srinagar, Srirangapatna, Jaipur, Lucknow, Lahore, Kolkata and elsewhere. He also explored the art and culture of the period. The journeys resulted in “The Historian’s Eye”, an exhibition of black-and-white photos shot on a cell phone that opened in Mumbai in April and will travel to other cities including Delhi and Chennai in the coming months.

Scottish-born and Delhi-based Dalrymple has written on travel (In Xanadu, From the Holy Mountain) and history (White Mughals, The Last Mughal) but his early passion was photography.

Condensed and edited excerpts from an interview about his teenage hobby, travelling in India and why visiting sites is the key to his kind of history writing:

CAN YOU TELL ME A LITTLE ABOUT HOW YOU GOT INTO PHOTOGRAPHY?