Who's behind the news?
Who's behind the news?
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Newsjunkie.net is a resource guide for journalists. We show who's behind the news, and provide tools to help navigate the modern business of information.
Use of Data
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The India Photo Archive Foundation (IPAF) is a public charitable trust based in Gurugram, Haryana, India. It was established in 2009 by Aditya Arya, a photographer, historian, and archivist, initially growing out of his personal archive of historical photographs. The Foundation's catalyst was Arya's discovery and cataloguing of the photographic archive of Kulwant Roy, a press photographer whose prints and negatives from the 1930s–1960s had been forgotten for over two decades after his death. Recognising the broader problem of neglected photographic heritage across India, Arya established the Foundation to address this at scale.
The Foundation is mandated to identify, preserve, restore, digitise, annotate, and document photographic archives of historical significance across India. It focuses on images spanning the independence struggle, the early post-independence period, the dawn of industrial India, royal and colonial personal collections, and the lives of ordinary people. Core collections include the Visual Archives of Kulwant Roy — which encompass photographs of political figures including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, and Mohammad Ali Jinnah — as well as materials documenting events such as the INA trials, the signing of the Indian Constitution, and the construction of the Bhakra Nangal Dam.
The Kulwant Roy archive is of particular significance for journalism history, as Roy was one of India's foremost press photographers of the independence era. The Foundation's collections include original press prints, negatives, and contact sheets documenting major political and public events, making it a key resource for researchers studying visual journalism in mid-20th century South Asia.
The Foundation disseminates its collections through exhibitions, publications, and the internet. A major initiative is Museo Camera — the largest non-profit, crowdfunded Centre for Photographic Arts in South Asia — established in a public-private partnership with the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram. The museum, which formally reopened in 2019 in an 18,000 sq. ft. facility, displays the Kulwant Roy archive alongside more than 2,500 cameras from over 100 nations. The Foundation also offers archival conservation and consultancy services and runs the Family Albums digitisation project.