D. A. Ahuja, a Punjabi photographer settled in Rangoon (Yangon) was the major postcard publisher in Burma (Myanmar). The firm published a distinctive series of colour postcards, both from its own work and likely from other photographers, including Beato and P. Klier, possibly without permission of those photographers (he was sued by the latter at least once for using images without permission). Nevertheless, Ahuja's postcards provide exceptionally broad and interesting views of this former colony, and covers select locations in British India. The firm is said to have lasted well into the 1960s.
"Vast indeed have been the changes that have occurred in Calcutta during the past few decades," writes Allister Macmillan in Seaports of India and Ceylon, "but none has been more remarkable than that represented by the Grand Hotel, which occupies an
The significance of Buddhism in Burma [Myanmar] reflected in a landscape dotted with pagodas. Shwegyin is close to the Indian border on the western side of Myanmar.
While postcards of snake charmers were common in India, one of the more striking such views might be this one from Ahuja's studio in Rangoon, Burma. While one man touches a snake, the other uses not a flute but cymbals to manage the snakes.
To be a named "beauty" on a postcard was quite an honor at the turn of the century. Rukmoni is shown here in a studio with colorized backdrop.
A collage which would have been assembled from a variety of photographs, not a single sitting. In the bottom center with the black jacket is the Nawab of Hyderabad, the richest of them all.
An impressive studio shot that lays bare the artifice used to make these images work: the painted backdrop with visible border, the matching design shoes and carpet, the desk or piano the woman's arm is resting on, surrounded by an oval frame common
D. A. Ahuja published a number of postcards of Rangoon jail, including the scene just before this one, while they are waiting for their breakfasts. According to one account of the Burmese prison system, "The annual reports on the prison
A classic late 19th century pose, with a three-legged Victorian table, books for the woman to rest her arm on, and painted studio backdrop.
D. A. Ahuja, a Rangoon [Yangon] Burma-based Punjabi photographer and publisher whose images covered major locations in India as well.
A superbly coloured postcard by D.A. Ahuja. It has probably been coloured with stencils given the inaccuracy around some of the edges, but the colours also seem well woven into the card so could have been part of the German printer's process.
