Halftone

[Original caption] The Kaid sits at his ease smoking his narghileh whose gilded bow his slave adroitly feds with tiny lumps of tobacco, keef or opium.

A humorous colonial postcard comparing clothes washing in England and India, part of a larger artist-signed series by the large Kolkata retailer.

"People like me who came to England in the 1950s have been there for centuries," writes the Jamaican cultural theorist Stuart Hall, "symbolically we have been there for centuries. I was coming home.

Avantiswami Temple was built by King Avantiverman in the latter half of the 9th century and dedicated to Vishnu; it is in ruins now though parts of it still survive and it is in the care of the Archaeological Survey of India.

A rare landscape postcard by M.V. Dhurandhar; the vast majority of the seventy or so postcards he painted during this period were of people. Rajabai Clock Tower is visible on the right.

[Original caption] Bombay, unlike most of the other shipping towns of importance, is not situated upon a river.

On the back of this self-explanatory card is a an ink blind-stamp "Greetings from My 1910 Cruise Around the World" and "Rangoon Burma Maters [sp?]." The card is postmarked Darjeeling, April 10, 1910 and addressed to "Oscar Schulze, Allegheny…

Sepia cards were printed in a brown colour instead of black inks on halftone, collotype and real photo postcards. They went in and out of fashion from 1900 through the 1940s.

[Original caption] A Potter, Northern India. Fostered by "caste," the native craftsman remains, contentedly, throughout his life in that sphere of industry into which he was born.

The Brahmin, as the art scholar Allan Life has noted, is reluctantly shuffling from tradition to modernity, from the temple behind him to the new city in front of him.