Baroda, India,

1948, printed 1950

Cartier-Bresson traveled to India five times, first in the fall of 1947, when he was one of two Western photographers permitted to follow and photograph Mahatma Gandhi for a week. A few months later, after Gandhi’s assassination in January 1948, Cartier-Bresson’s portraits of the civil rights leader, along with images taken at Gandhi’s funeral and of the refugee movement caused by partition, were published in Life magazine, where they brought the photographer worldwide acclaim. During this inaugural trip to India, Cartier-Bresson stayed for several months and traveled widely, including a stop in the city of Baroda, in eastern India. There he turned his lens to other subjects, taking several pictures of the royal family, including this one of the Maharani Sita Devi of Baroda looking into a large circular mirror held up for her by a servant.