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Homai Vyarawalla: India’s First Woman Photojournalist

Her earliest photographs carried her husband’s name, not her own. Decades later, she became one of India’s most celebrated photojournalists.

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Homai Vyarawalla was born on 9 December 1913, in Navsari, Gujarat.
She studied at Bombay University and at the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai.
Her husband, Maneckshaw Jamshetji Vyarawalla, a Times of India photographer, taught her the craft.
She is widely regarded as India’s first woman photojournalist.
Her earliest photographs, published from the late 1930s, ran under her husband’s name, since women were not taken seriously as journalists.
She later worked under the pseudonym “Dalda 13,” a name entirely of her own choosing.
She began her career at the Bombay Chronicle in 1938, then relocated to Delhi to work for The Illustrated Weekly of India.
From the 1940s until 1970, she also worked for the British Information Services.
She photographed major independence-era figures, including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Indira Gandhi.
She died on 15 January 2012, in Vadodara, Gujarat, aged 98.

On 24 November 1956, she photographed the 14th Dalai Lama entering India via the Nathu La pass, for Life Magazine.
She retired from photography in 1970, a year after her husband’s death, citing the changing, more aggressive culture of press photography.
She received the Chameli Devi Jain Award in 1998, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in 2010.
In 2011, she was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian honour.
Her photograph collection was donated to the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, in Delhi.

Don’t confuse Vyarawalla’s early bylines with her chosen pseudonym. Her earliest work ran under her husband’s name, because editors would not credit a woman photographer. “Dalda 13” came later, and was a name she picked for herself.
Her retirement in 1970 was a deliberate choice, not a forced end to her career. She stepped back specifically because she disliked the more intrusive press culture emerging around her, not because of ill health or lack of work.
Her honours came very late in her life. The Padma Vibhushan arrived in 2011, six decades after her career began, and only months before her death in January 2012.