Dhanna Singh (photographer)

Photograph of Dhanna Singh Chahal 'Patialvi' posing with his bicycle, featured in a 1935 edition of magazine 'Phulwari'. Dhanna Singh 'Patialvi' (c. 1893 or 1905 – 2 March 1935) was a photographer of colonial-era Punjab. He captured hundreds of photographs of Sikh shrines while travelling around on his bicycle and camera in the 1920s and 1930s. He called himself 'cycle yatru' (meaning "cycle pilgrim"). Travelling over 20,000 miles on his bike, he visited more than 1,600 Sikh sites and captured photographs of many of them. He returned to Patiala after three years, with his accounts being recorded in Sikh newspapers, and decided to purchase a camera and learn photography to capture subsequent trips.

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