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All in a Flash sets out by asking foundational questions around the still image that remain important as ever: How has news photography shaped our understanding of history? How has it affected our way of learning about the world—its many tragedies and few triumphs? What does it mean to appreciate, or even to create, a photograph in these image-saturated times?

In doing so, it moves from Sunil Janah’s searing photographs of the aftermath of Partition to Raghu Rai’s haunting images of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy to the extraordinary scale of loss caught on camera during the Coronavirus pandemic by Qamar Sibtain and Ritesh Shukla. It revisits the Taj Mahal as a site of sublime beauty and as a stage for celebrity and politics alike, from John Murray’s first-ever negatives of the monument to Princess Diana’s iconic visit. It recalls the first use of evidence photography in the Amherst Street murder case in Calcutta in 1868 to the dwindling access of press photographers in corridors of power post-2014.

Often reflective if documentary in tone, in All in a Flash, Binoo K. John examines roughly 150 years of photography in the sub-continent to show how photographers have stood at the front line of history—often at great personal risk—to make visible what words alone cannot.

All in a Flash is a sharp survey of news photography in India anchored by images that have become part of the nation’s visual memory.

‘Well researched, deeply insightful, with awesome pictures from 150 years of photography.’  – PRASHANT PANJIAR