Homai Vyarawalla began taking photographs in Bombay in the 1930s, at a time when photography was considered an unusual profession for a woman in India, and she initially had her early work published under her husband's name, since editors were reportedly more willing to accept photographs credited to a man.
She gradually built her own reputation and moved to Delhi, where she spent decades photographing the most significant political events of India's transition from colonial rule to independence — Mahatma Gandhi's funeral, Jawaharlal Nehru's early years as Prime Minister, and the daily texture of a new nation's government finding its footing.
She worked under the professional name 'Dalda 13,' carrying a heavy, cumbersome camera into press scrums dominated by male photographers, and became known for a quiet, patient style of working that let her capture unguarded, informal moments of major political figures that more aggressive photographers often missed entirely.
She retired from professional photography in 1970, largely disillusioned with what she felt was a decline in journalistic standards, and lived quietly for decades before her archive was rediscovered and celebrated later in life, earning her the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian honor, in 2011, decades after she had stopped shooting.