A postcard like this was the result of a careful and perhaps exhausting pose by the dancers. Note the man holding up the backdrop, which probably covered a studio wall or other scene.
Illustrated postcards actually came to Mumbai at an inauspicious moment. The increased ship traffic from Hong Kong and South Africa brought the bubonic plague back to Mumbai in 1896.
These kinds of offensive postcards seem to have been part of series by both Higginbotham's and their main competitor in South India, Spencer & Co. They show servants in various acts of revolt, dereliction or other transgressions that would have made…
Bremner was among the very earliest postcard publishers of SIndh, and included a handful of views of Sukkur, a town not often photographed by colonial residents.
British cemeteries in South Asia are among the quietest and saddest of places, especially when one walks through them and notes how many people died young, and how many of these were infants.
Postcards of Darjeeling's bazaar were very common, perhaps because of the excitement at the visual engagement of people coming with their goods from nearby villages and offering them to the hillstation's residents and tourists.
On the back of this card, showing one of the most memorable places to colonial residents from the Uprising of 1857, its significance is explained in this handwritten message: "“Dear Lill, This is the place where “During the Mutiny” the Women and…
