Dalda 13. A portrait of Homai Vyarawalla - ACE414.3

Photographs Vyarawalla took after she went freelance in 1951. State banquet; Martin Luther King and Coretta King with Nehru; King Faisal of Saudi Arabia with Nehru; dancers; Duke Ellington. Photograph of Indira Gandhi. Vyarawalla driving; VO talks about the Gandhi-Nehru household. A rare photograph of Indira Gandhi with her husband, Feroze. Vyarawalla VO talking about her own household, and how her husband helped her. Photographs of her with her family. Photographs of her son, Farooq, who looked after the house when his parents were away. Vyarawalla with a neighbour. Her VO saying her family never complained when she put her work before housekeeping. Photographs of funeral of Lal Bahadur Shastri: Vyarawalla VO describes Mrs Shastri’s behaviour. Vyarawalla driving. Her VO talking about Mahatma Gandhi’s funeral; photographs. She talks about hearing of Gandhi’s assassination and says that she had been going to film him but had changed her mind; no photographers were present at his death and she was offered $20,000 for one frame of the 16mm film people believed she had taken a few hours earlier. Vyarawalla in her garden. Dayanita Singh talking about researching women photographers but not knowing of the existence of Homai Vyarawalla at the time. Photographs of Nehru’s funeral. Singh says that even after she discovered Vyarawalla’s work, she could find nothing about her in any histories of photography and doesn’t understand – given that she covered many major historical events in India and her work was published internationally – how she was left out. Vyarawalla walking to the river. Her VO talks about living with her son in Rajasthan where no-one knew she had been a press photographer. She describes burning photographs and negatives as she didn’t want to carry them around with her. Pictures of Nehru and figures like Edwina Mountbatten, Eleanor Roosevelt, Danny Kaye. Vyarawalla’s VO saying she stopped taking press photographs in the 1970s because the younger generation of photographers behaved badly, and consequently photographers were no longer respected.; pictures of Harold Macmillan, Mrs Gandhi, Haile Selassie, Louis Mountbatten, Vyarawalla herself, Nehru, etc. Credits.