This text explores the changing role of photographic portraiture in India, tracing photography's various purposes and goals from colonial to post-colonial times. It identifies three key periods in Indian portraiture: under British rule; later for moral instruction; and in modern popular culture. Photographic culture thus became a mutable realm in which capturing likeness was only part of the project. This account of the change from depiction to invention uncovers links between these images and the society and history from which they emerge.