In Hinduism, Durga is a form of Devi, the supreme goddess. Durga is depicted as a warrior woman riding a lion or a tiger with multiple hands carrying weapons and assuming mudras, or symbolic hand gestures.
Hindu woman wearing a white sari. Getting the shades and printing correct, especially the white, on this card would have required great skill, and apparently was done by the leading early German postcard printer Knackstedt and Roder.
Note the title, which attempts to justify the nude image as some sort of ethnographic study. Unusual for Andree, many of whose images are portrait photographs, are the painted backdrop, which makes you wonder about how much of the photograph is a…
K. Lall & Co. were a publisher of interesting real photo postcards, like this one of a cotton spinner, whose flat composition speaks to a style of portrait photography not common among photographers.
Howard Woody, a pioneer researcher of early German printing postcard technologies writes of this postcard that the collotype’s “light hues accent the woman’s layered costumer and create an attractive luminous image that contrasts with the muted…
Saraswati is the goddess of learning and the arts (e.g., music), and is often seen playing the Veena, a string instrument. She is also worshipped as the goddess of thoughts of truth and forgiveness.
Bimla Kumari was an Indian actress who appeared in films throughout the 1930s, 40s, and 50s and was primarily known as a supporting actress. She may not be as widely remembered as Devika Rani, but she contributed to the early days of Indian cinema.
J.D. Gondhalekar (1909-1981) produced a series of at least ten postcards called "Indian Topics" around 1942, among the few Indian-artist signed postcard series from colonial times.
