Remembering the Vageeswari, the first made in India camera that left a lasting impression

Long before we got cameras on the backs and fronts of our smartphones, and image-making became a thing we do almost reflexively, photography was a specialised profession. Today, you could stand against a white wall and ask a friend to take a photo for your international visa. But for decades, that 2 x 2 inch passport photo also required an elaborate setup, expensive machinery, deep technical know-how and a lot of time in the dark room.

For a certain generation that grew up in Kerala during the 1950s-1970s, getting a passport-sized photo meant a trip to the photo studio, and standing in front of the Vageeswari – the first field camera made in India that was recognised around the world for its technical finesse. The story of the Vageeswari camera begins in 1942, Alappuzha, Kerala. And it does so, not in a studio but rather in a musical instruments repair shop.

As the story goes, Padmanabhan Nair, a local photo studio owner turns up at the doorstep of Kunju Kunju Bhagavathar, a musician who also repaired Indian musical instruments such as the veena, harmonium and mridangam, asking if he could fix the torn bellows of the field camera he had acquired from overseas.

Nair figured since the bellows of the camera weren’t very different from that of the harmonium, Bhagavathar would be able to fix them. Sure enough, the musician-mechanic, well-acquainted with the mechanism, accomplished the job.

Watching him repair this exotic and expensive gadget was Bhagavathar’s teenage son and apprentice, Karunakaran who wondered if they could make these cameras from scratch.

By this time, photography in India had evolved from being a tool of documentation in the British Raj’s great colonial enterprise, and available to the common man as a tool for archiving personal histories. commercial camera studios had proliferated across India with one of the first being set up in Shimla by Bourne and Shepherd nearly 80 years earlier, in 1863. But studio owners all over relied on foreign-made twin lens cameras that could take 12 6×6 cm photographs at a time. These were prohibitively expensive and Karunakaran had, perhaps unwittingly, stumbled upon an opportunity.

The birth of a camera; the birth of a nation

“Karunakaran took it up as a challenge,” says Satheesh Nair, a photographer based in Thrissur, who also restores cameras. “He started enquiring about the details of a camera; its specifications, configurations. To study the instrument and collect more information, he travelled to Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai. Karunakaran even got his hands on an old camera and took it apart to understand its inner workings. Then, he purchased the wood, screws and other parts and began to put it together.”

To assemble a large camera manually and single-handedly was a tedious job, but he did it. By 1946, approximately a year before India won her independence, Karunakaran had built the Vageeswari camera. Named after the goddess Saraswati, who the family worshipped, the Vageeswari camera was a first of its kind: A proper folding field camera, at par with foreign-made devices, available for a fraction of the price.

Its body was made of teak wood, one of the most valuable and durable woods available in Kerala. Its knobs were made of aluminium and brass, and Nettlefold screws were used to hold it together. On its front was attached a leather bellow as its focusing mechanism, which held German lenses. Apart from the lenses and a wood planing machine, also sourced from Germany, the Vageeswari was assembled entirely by hand with high quality products. “It was, and will continue to be recognised, as the most beautiful camera ever made in India,” he enthuses.

“Karunakaran made about eight variants of the Vageeswari, all of which were meant for studio use for everything from passport-sized photos to wide-group shots, such as the class or family photo,” Nair continues. The Vageeswari used Agfa sheet films, which meant the photos didn’t need to be enlarged to print – although that was possible to do if desired.

It was an instant hit, to put it mildly. By 1950, just four years after he had produced the first Vageeswari camera, Karunakaran had set up a small outfit, employing 30 people in Alappuzha, rolling out anywhere between 50-100 cameras per month –priced for the princely sum of Rs 250. This was a fraction of what foreign-made cameras cost. Demand was high, and as its reputation grew, Karunakaran was filling orders from as far away as Germany and Sri Lanka by the 1960s.

So great was Vageeswari’s influence that it inspired many imitations. Nair recalls a breakout faction from Karunakaran’s outfit setting up “Vageeswari Camera Works” in Alappuzha itself. Similarly, Thrissur became home to “Rageeswari” cameras. “Karunakaran could never deliver on time, but people waited for his cameras because their quality was incomparable,” says Nair.

K Karunakaran passed away in 2016, but for a certain generation, Vageeswari left a lasting impression on the Indian art and technology landscape. The Vageeswari camera was “one of the best-sellers of its time, owing to its reputation of being the most precise, elegant and robust cameras ever produced,” wrote Dr Unni Pulikkal, director of PhotoMuse, in a tribute post on Facebook in 2019.

“It ruled the world of field cameras until the 1980s, when the market was flooded with compact cameras,” Pulikkal added. “The veterans – both the maker and the product – sank into oblivion, underrecognised and unremembered!” Today, though, the legend of the Vageeswari is being excavated and reinstated through the efforts of collectors like Dr Pulikkal, and Aditya Arya, founder of Gurgaon’s Museo Camera, among many others. Both of their elaborate camera collections feature the Vageeswari.

Vageeswari: A legacy restored

The Vageeswari’s legacy is also being restored by the work of artists like Anu John David who deployed this “obsolete” technology for his state-award winning works that were part of Lokame Tharavadu, a vast art show in the middle of the pandemic curated by Bose Krishnamachari and produced by the Kochi Biennale Foundation.

David used the Vageeswari to document the evolving syncretic culture of Alappuzha; adding his own narrative by reverse-painting his negative photographs to underline its troubled history as well. “My interest in the Vageeswari began from my conversations with other photographers and studio owners,” says David, who has been a digital photographer for over a decade.

“Anyone who used film cameras or owned a studio knew of the Vageeswari. Plus, I realised that the place where the camera was produced was where my mother would teach in Alapuzzha. I’d been to the place several times in my youth but never knew about it.”

It took David some time to get his hands on a functioning Vageeswari. After several rejections and dead ends, David managed to buy one, had it mended by Nair, learned how to operate it from KR Boney, a veteran studio photographer based in Kochi. “For the first 5-10 days, I couldn’t produce a single image, it was very challenging.”

“The fun part of using the Vageeswari,” continues David, “is that you can only load two films in one slide. I had two slides, which meant I could use only four films at a time.” Because finding the best light was a priority, since a camera as old as this would not be able to capture shadows well, David would shoot either before 10AM or between 3PM and 6PM. “I’d go out in the morning, shoot, develop, and repeat the same process in the evening.”

In the tediousness of this process, David soon found mindfulness. “When I’d go to a place and shoot the landscape, I’d have to ensure that I had set up my camera on time and finalised my composition. I’d take an image and I’d have no idea how it had come out till I developed it. But in the dark room, when you do develop it, you have a joyful moment.”

David says his experience with the Vageeswari has helped him grow as a photographer – to compose carefully, to shoot sparingly. “When you can make just eight images in a day,” says David, “is when you realise their true worth. It’s changed my entire approach to photography.”

Production of the Vageeswari stopped in 1995, as more compact, affordable, personal technology came through the door – also weakening the place of the studio photographer in urban society. Nair himself spent years as a staff photographer at an agricultural university, before returning to photography, especially the Vageeswari, some years ago. Not being able to meet Karunakaran is one of his life’s greatest regrets, says Nair.

Why did a brand as successful and internationally-reputed not pivot to meet the needs of the market as it changed? “It was practically a one-man show,” Nair explains. “It was a question of expanding the company, and he didn’t have the manpower for it.”

What then is the Vageeswari’s legacy?

As shooting on film becomes trendy again, photographers the world over are reacquainting themselves with the pleasure to be found in the slow, deliberate process of composing, shooting and developing an image in a dark room.

Today, because of its rarity, the Vageeswari is a collector’s item. If restored, it can be a hobbyist’s prized possession. In the hands of an artist-photographer like David, it can be a lens to look at a world lost to us.

The Vageeswari’s extraordinary story is also emblematic of the camera studio and the printed photo – both artefacts of that lost world. Nair, David and dozens of studio owners and collectors in Kerala have made efforts to ensure that the Vageeswari itself doesn’t lose its place in Indian history.

It must be remembered, they say, because it was a manufacturing marvel. “That a camera of this calibre could be, and was, made in India,” says Nair, “must never be forgotten.”

Nidhi Gupta is a Mumbai-based lifestyle writer and editor.