Homai Vyarawalla, 'First Lady of the Lens' Homai Vyarawalla, India's first female photojournalist, who died on Sunday, chronicled India's independence with a spirit that was unmatched by the following generations, in part because of changes in India itself. "Her images of Jawaharlal Nehru addressing a jubilant crowd in Delhi, and of the body of Mohandas K. Gandhi being prepared for cremation, give a vivid sense of the mood of a nation whose self-image was cast in a romantic epic mold," Holland Cotter wrote in The New York Times in a 1997 review of a show in Queens, New York, that featured Ms. Vyarawalla's work. "Much has happened since - sectarian violence, economic upheaval, the extended medical emergency of AIDS - to eat away at that initial tragedy-shadowed optimism," Mr. Cotter wrote. And the heightened, even exultant mood that runs through Ms. Vyarawalla's pictures is nowhere to be found in the work of her younger colleagues. Ms. Vyarawalla died on Sunday at age 98 in Vadodara. Her passing, and her iconoclastic life, were chronicled by news outlets in India during the past two days, but there are few examples of her photographs on the Internet. Later in life, Ms. Vyarawalla gave her collection of photographs to the New Delhi-based Alkazi Foundation for the Arts ("like a true Gandian," the Hindustan Times observed). An Alkazi Foundation spokeswoman shared these images with India Ink. The daughter of traveling theatre professionals, Ms. Vyarawalla married at a young age to a Times of India photographer and accountant, said India Today, in a story that dubbed her the "First Lady of the Lens." The Vyarawallas got their big break when World War II came to Asia. With Singapore being overrun by the Japanese, the British shifted their Information Office to New Delhi. The office was looking for photographers and Stanley Jepson at the Weekly recommended the Vyarawallas, who shifted to New Delhi in 1942. [Husband] Manekshaw was "lent" to the British Information Services (BIS) for one year by The Times of India, but Homai became a full-time employee at BIS and was allowed to accept freelance assignments also." Ms. Vyarawalla traveled around Delhi by bicycle, wearing a sari and lugging her heavy equipment herself. In 1970, she abruptly packed up her cameras, disgusted by her peers in photojournalism. "My colleagues had all been gentlemen but the new crop did not know how to behave in high society," Ms. Vyarawalla told India Today. I did not want to be associated with such riffraff.