With the huge leap technology has taken, there are many things that have disappeared or are on their way out from our lives. Some of them have already become memories. And some will soon become.

Among one such phenomenon is the trend of photography in this “Queen of Hills”. Tourists who came here always loved getting themselves photographed by the several photographers at shops at Jhoolaghar and also atop the Gun Hill and take back memories of their trip to the hill station.

However, with the “selfie” era that is upon us now, this trend is on the wane. Only when people take Kumaoni and Garhwali dresses from these shops do they get

themselves photographed by these Mussoorie photographers.Almost all the famous photo studios in the town have closed down.

However, the great tradition of photography in this hill town must not be forgotten. Even till a few years ago, it was known to all and could be understood by the visitors.

The Queen of Hills has always been home to those who ‘write with light’. Foremost amongst them is Samuel Bourne who in Photographic Journey in the Himalayas (1863) included three dozen pictures of these hills. This twenty-nine year old bank clerk left a vivid record of the  hill station in the days of its infancy.

Close behind him, almost snapping at his heels was Thomas Alfred Rust with landscapes from the 1865. later his son, Julian Rust recorded  images of the ‘Gay 1920s’  in Mussoorie with his camera.In their wake came the Kinsey Brothers, Doon Studio, Mela Ram & Sons, Bhanu Studio, Hari Saran, Bora’s Studio  and the least glamorous of them all, Glamour Studio.

  When the ropeway was installed upto the Gun Hill from Jhoolaghar on   the Mall Road, forty shops and more, of photowallas, soon came up. For years ,they have all been  dressing eager honeymooners in outlandish hill dresses or turning them into Chambal dacoits, a la Gabbar Singh from the block-buster Bollywood film Sholay–complete with bandolier and gun!.

Post partition, Thukral Studio near Picture Palace was the Mecca of photographers, both big and small. They made great pictures of school fancy fairs, debates, class groups and sport events. But they kept week-ends for themselves, taking nature pictures around the Upper Chakkar in landour.

Well-known writer and photographer Ganesh Saili ,an old resident of Mussoorie, says the story of his collection of old pictures of landour and Mussoorie dates back to the 1970s.  He discovered  a treasure at  the storeroom of  the Municipal committee.From here, he was able to rescue from certain oblivion, the last few plates of TA Rust , the celebrated photographer of the 1880s.

Yet those early days of photography were hazardous -at least, according to the Mussoorie Miscellany, published in the 1920s.It tells us that a certain Captain Charles Henry Deane Spread, of the Invalid Establishment, landour, was struck by lightning and killed at Balahissar on September 3, 1879 while he  was preparing to develop some photographic plates and  was collecting rainwater for the process.   

 In those early days of photography , Rust took to the new technology like a fish to water. His images of the rich and famous brought him instant recognition, fame and soon he was a man of considerable means.

later on, his son, Julian Rust, inherited the studio on Camel’s Back Road. He was a flourishing photographer, who displayed his works by the roadside.He had a tiff with the city fathers about the location of his stall. One day, among his exhibits there appeared the beautifully executed likeness of the chairman of the local Board, mounted on an ass. It was not a genuine photograph but just a clever piece of artistry, and fireworks followed. later, Julian sold off the family business and went off to South Africa with his beautiful Irish wife, Elizabeth Anne Nelligan.

Images of landour and Mussoorie in the old photos speak louder than words.  They tell their own story of a laidback lifestyle when the Queen of Hills had not yet been ravaged by developers. The memsahib in a rickshaw, the virgin hillsides untouched by later-day settlers, the Mall, far  less peopled than it is today. They bring alive the mirth and gaiety, the laughter and the chatter, the life of the people long gone to rest.

“To me they remain quintessential nostalgia -- a visual proof of  more than a hundred years of the camera in Mussoorie.  They continue to defy the relentless march of Time in these first foothills of the Garhwal Himalaya,” remarks Saili.