Gardens on the Dahl Lake, Kashmir
Fred Bremner was one of the first postcard publishers of Kashmir, offering numerous cards of the Princely State based on photographs he tool there around 1900.
Fred Bremner was one of the first postcard publishers of Kashmir, offering numerous cards of the Princely State based on photographs he tool there around 1900.
A superbly composed Bremner image, from the trees and boat in the foreground, the reflective lake stretching back towards a Hindu temple on the banks.
A less-typical image of an "Indian well," with a rugged sloping foreground that reminds the viewer how far beneath water could lie and the messiness of its extraction.
"Cattle borwsed homewards to small hidden hamlets in the valleys, all grew softer and greyer till it was quite dark and the lights came out where she had not thought there was any habitation at all – single lamps here and there in Kasauli, pinpricks
Bremner made a whole series of postcards of the 1903 Delhi Durbar, and as with many photographers, it was the Camel Corps that caught his camera.
Postmarked "Meean Meer" [Mian Mir, Lahore Cantonment), Nov.
The Khojak tunnel, opened in 1892, is almost 2.5 miles in length and passes through the hills shown here.
The city of Baramulla is about 55 km from Srinagar, and because it was a key transit point for travelers to Srinagar, one of the most popular postcard locations in Kashmir.
It is to Bremner's credit that he managed to capture some of the most fleeting figures on camera, even if in rich, "picturesque" surroundings like this one where their presence added context and measure to images (and the trade that flowed through
This may be the very cottage where Bremner had an indelible experience. He writes in his autobiography “I never spent such a night. The melting snow was trickling on to the bed through apertures in the ceiling.
The Princely State of Chamba appeared on few postcards during the Raj even though its rulers seemed to have good relationships with a number of Punjab-based photographers, including Fred Bremner and John Burke.