HOMAI VYARAWALLA , FIRST INDIAN FEMALE PHOTO JOURNALIST BORN 1913 DECEMBER 9

HOMAI VYARAWALLA ,

FIRST INDIAN FEMALE PHOTO JOURNALIST

BORN 1913 DECEMBER 9

Homai Vyarawalla (9 December 1913 – 15 January 2012), commonly known by her pseudonym Dalda 13, was India's first woman photojournalist.[2][3] First active in the late 1930s, she retired in the early 1970s. In 2011, she was awarded Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award of the Republic of India.[4]
Homai Vyarawalla was born on 9 December 1913 at Pranjal Shah's house.[5]
Personal life[edit source]
Vyarawalla was married to Manekshaw Jamshetji Vyarawalla, an accountant and photographer for the Times of India.[6] In 1970, a year after her husband’s death, she gave up photography as she did not wish to work with the new generation paparazzi culture.[7] [8]

Homai Vyarawalla then moved to Pilani, Rajasthan, with her only son, Farouq who taught at BITS Pilani. She returned to Vadodara (formerly Baroda) with her son in 1982.[9] After her son's death from cancer in 1989, she lived alone in a small apartment in Baroda and spent her time gardening.[10]
Career[edit source]
Vyarawalla started her career in the 1930s. At the onset of the World War II, she started working on assignments for the Mumbai-based The Illustrated Weekly of India magazine which published many of her black and white images that later became iconic.[11] In the early years of her career, since Vyarawalla was unknown and a woman, her photographs were published under her husband's name.[12]
Eventually her photography received notice at the national level, particularly after moving to Delhi in 1942 to join the British Information Services, where she photographed many political and national leaders in the period leading up to independence, including Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Indira Gandhi and the Nehru-Gandhi family while working as a press photographer.[12]

Her favourite subject was Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India.
Most of her photographs were published under the pseudonym "Dalda 13″. The reasons behind her choice of this name were that her birth year was 1913, she met her husband at the age of 13 and her first car's number plate read "DLD 13″[13].
In 1970, shortly after her husband's death, Homai Vyarawalla decided to give up photography lamenting over the "bad behaviour" of the new generation of photographers.[14] She did not take a single photograph in the last 40-plus years of her life. When asked why she quit photography while at the peak of her profession, she said

"It was not worth it anymore. We had rules for photographers; we even followed a dress code. We treated each other with respect, like colleagues. But then, things changed for the worst. They [the new generation of photographers] were only interested in making a few quick bucks; I didn't want to be part of the crowd anymore."[11]
Later in life, Vyarawalla gave her collection of photographs to the Delhi-based Alkazi Foundation for the Arts.
In 2010, the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai (NGMA) in collaboration with the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts presented a retrospective of her work.[11]

Prime Minister Nehru with Mrs. Simon, the wife ofthe British Deputy High Commissioner, on board thefirst BOAC flight in India.  HomaiVyarawalla archive,Alkazi Collection ofPhotography

Google honoured her legacy on her 104th Birth Anniversary with a doodle.[15] On her 104th birthday Google tribute to Homai Vyarwala India's first woman photojournalist with a Doodle as " First Lady of the Lens". Doodle drawn by the guest Doodler and Mumbai artist Sameer Kulavoor. In the Doodle, Homai Vyarwala is found at the centre.
Death[edit source]

In January 2012, Vyarawalla fell from her bed and fractured a hip bone. Her neighbours had helped her reach a hospital where she developed breathing complications. She had been suffering from interstitial lung disease which resulted in her death at 10.30 am on 15 January 2012.[16]