Discover the life and legacy of Purna Chandra Bindhani, Odisha’s pioneering photojournalist, artist, and cultural icon who captured a changing era
Bhaskar Parichha
Purna Chandra Bindhani occupies a special place in the history of photography and journalism in Odisha. A photographer, journalist, writer, poet, playwright, actor, and artist, he belonged to a generation that witnessed the transition of Odisha from the colonial era into independence and the modern age. His camera became an instrument not merely for recording events but for preserving people, landscapes, and moments that might otherwise have disappeared from public memory.
Born on August 24, 1924, in Baripada, Mayurbhanj, Bindhani developed an interest in photography remarkably early. As a schoolboy at Baripada High School in the 1930s, he experimented with a pinhole camera. A Bengali science teacher reportedly noticed his aptitude and encouraged his interest. At a time when photography required considerable patience, technical knowledge, and access to cumbersome equipment, his pursuit of the medium was itself unusual.
Bindhani gradually emerged as one of Odisha’s pioneering photojournalists. He worked at a time when newspapers were only beginning to appreciate the importance of photographs as an integral part of journalism. He also worked as a photographer associated with the police department, gaining experience in documenting people, places, and events with a documentary eye.
What distinguishes Bindhani’s work is its range. His photographs were not confined to official occasions. He photographed ordinary people and everyday life, capturing the social and cultural landscape of Mayurbhanj. In an age before digital photography, smartphones, and instant publication, every photograph demanded preparation, technical skill, and a strong sense of timing.
One of his memorable photographs was taken during Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s visit to Baripada in 1974. The image subsequently found its way onto the cover of a book on Indira Gandhi, giving national visibility to the work of a photographer working from a relatively small town in Odisha.
Another photograph demonstrated Bindhani’s sensitivity to the human and aesthetic dimensions of rural life. It showed an Adivasi girl carrying a bundle of paddy home, silhouetted against the evening light.
The photograph was used on the cover of Manoj Das’s magazine Diganta and was given the evocative title “Chhai Aluara Rasa”—the beauty of light and shade. The image reflected something central to Bindhani’s photography: the ability to discover poetry in ordinary life.
His photographic work also travelled beyond Odisha. His pictures were displayed at exhibitions outside the state and received recognition, demonstrating that his visual language could communicate beyond regional boundaries.
But to describe Bindhani merely as a photographer would be to underestimate the breadth of his personality. He was deeply involved in literature and the arts. He edited the literary magazine Raka from Baripada and wrote poetry, plays, and other literary works. He also acted and had interests in architecture, painting, and handicrafts. This combination of photography and literature perhaps explains the distinctive quality of his images: they often seem to tell stories rather than merely record scenes. Bindhani was a multifaceted cultural figure who also worked as an artist, writer, and actor. He appeared in Odia films including Abhiman and Phula Chandan. His face depicting the 28 rasas is one of the vintage photographs in his collection.
Bindhani’s long life itself spanned an extraordinary period of technological and social transformation. He began photography when cameras, film and darkrooms were specialised tools. He lived to see photography become accessible to virtually everyone through digital technology and mobile phones. Yet his early photographs belong to a different visual culture—one in which the photographer had to anticipate a moment, compose it carefully, and wait for the image to emerge.
He died on January 14, 2024, at the age of 101. His passing marked the end of a remarkable chapter in Odisha’s photographic history. Today, Bindhani’s importance lies not simply in the claim that he was among Odisha’s earliest print-media photographers. His greater legacy is the visual record he helped create. Much of twentieth-century Odisha changed beyond recognition—its towns expanded, traditional occupations disappeared, landscapes altered and generations passed. Photographs made by pioneers like Bindhani remain among the few enduring witnesses to that transformation.
His life reminds us that photography is more than the preservation of an image. In the hands of a sensitive photographer, it becomes a form of history. Purna Chandra Bindhani’s camera captured not just Odisha as it looked, but Odisha as it lived.
(The author is a senior journalist and columnist. Views expressed are personal.)