Founded in 1882 by PA Johnston and Theodore Julius Hoffmann, Johnston & Hoffmann was the first and largest studio based in Calcutta (now Kolkata), with later branches being opened in Darjeeling, Shimla and Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar). The firm, probably the second-largest in India at the time after Bourne & Shepherd, produced portraits of British officers, wealthy Indian families and royalty. They were also commissioned with long term projects that involved travel, typically for ethnographic portraiture. The Calcutta studio was established in 1882 at 22 Chowringhee Road and continued to be the centre of operations throughout the firm’s lifetime. The next branch, in Rangoon, opened in 1889 but closed within a year. In 1890, Johnston & Hoffmann opened another branch in Darjeeling, and then later one in Shimla in the mid-1890s, a conjecture based on a surviving advertisement poster. After Johnston died in 1891, Hoffmann retained the firm’s name and continued to run the studio with the help of assistants. One of these, hired in 1905, was AD Long, who went on to take over the studio in 1928, after Hoffman’s death in 1921.

The firm’s main source of income was the studio portraits of British officials, dignitaries and Indian elites belonging to royal families, including cabinet cards and cartes de visite. Notably, these include a portrait of a young Rabindranath and Mrinalini Tagore, a group photograph of Maharana Fateh Singh of Mewar with various British officers on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887 and a portrait of Maharaja Sir Bhagwati Prasad Singh of Balrampur, dated 1900, that was likely hand-coloured by an independent artist. At times, the firm also made photographic postcards featuring celebrity sitters, such as the actress Maie Ash, for whom they travelled to Southampton, England in 1906.