Homai Vyarawalla

Homai Vyarawalla (9 December 1913 – 15 January 2012), commonly known by her pseudonym Dalda 13, was India's first woman photojournalist. She began her career in 1938 working for the Bombay Chronicle, capturing images of daily life in the city. Vyarawalla worked for the British Information Services from the 1940s until 1970 when she retired. In 2011, she was awarded Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award of the Republic of India. She was amongst the first women in India to join a mainstream publication when she joined The Illustrated Weekly of India. A pioneer in her field, Vyarawalla died at the age of 98. Google doodle honoured India's "First Lady of the lens" in 2017 with a tapestry of Indian life and history drawn by guest doodler Sameer Kulavoor.

Early life and education Homai Vyarawalla was born on 9 December 1913 to a Parsi Zoroastrian family in Navsari, Gujarat. Vyarawalla spent her initial years in Navsari and her childhood moving from place to place with her father's travelling theatre company.

Homai Vyarawalla then moved to Pilani, Rajasthan, with her only son, Farouq, who taught at BITS Pilani. After her son's death from cancer in 1989, she lived alone in a small apartment in Baroda and spent her time gardening.

Career

Vyarawalla started her career in the 1930s. At the onset of World War II, she started working on assignments for Mumbai-based The Illustrated Weekly of India magazine which published many of her most admired black-and-white images. In the early years of her career, since Vyarawalla was unknown and a woman, her photographs were published under her husband's name. Vyarawalla stated that because women were not taken seriously as journalists she was able to take high-quality, revealing photographs of her subjects without interference:

Eventually her photography received notice at the national level, particularly after moving to Delhi in 1942 to join the British Information Services. As a press photographer, she recorded 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. and, in 2010, in collaboration with the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai (NGMA), the foundation presented a retrospective of her work.

Awards The President, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil presenting the Padma Vibhushan Award to Smt. Homai Vyarawalla, at an Investiture Ceremony II, at Rashtrapati Bhavan, in New Delhi on April 01, 2011

In 1998, Vyarawalla was honoured with the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Mediaperson. In 2010, the I&B Ministry honoured her with the Lifetime Achievement Award. She was awarded Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honour in 2011.