A Peasant's Hut in Sind
A storybook shot by Fred Bremner, six people poised in performance, reminding us how much children and women's labor keeps the farm going.
Bremner
A Kashmiri Nautch Girl
One of the earliest postcards of a Kashmiri nautch girl, this was mailed from Chenna (Madras) on Sept. 17, 1903 to Miss Olive McMillan, St. Augustine's, Cliftonville, Margate, England: "With many Salaams from Mother."
See Clifton & Co.'s version of
Punjabi's Weaving Mats
One of my favourite, and among the rarest of early Bremner postcards.
Elphinstone Street, Karachi
An view of one of Karachi's major arteries. This view by Fred Bremner is probably from 1889 or the early 1890s when he first settled in the city and became one of its earliest photographers.
Chenar Bagh, Kashmir
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.
An Indian Well
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.
View from Grand Hotel Avenue, Simla
"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
Bikaner Camel Corps, Delhi Coronation Durbar
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.
Bolan Railway, near Panir
The Khojak tunnel, opened in 1892, is almost 2.5 miles in length and passes through the hills shown here.
Simla, looking towards Jakho
Raaja Bhasin, in his Simla The Summer Capital of British India (2011) has a nice quote about Shimla during the Raj and afterwards: "With this detached atmosphere from the rest of India, it is no wonder that the blame for the disasters of the Afghan
