Brahman
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.
Color
Bear-Leader (Darweshi)
A very early lithographed card by Paul Gerhardt, who ran the lithographic printers at the Ravi Varma Press.
Sent to Miss Ettoi Virmillion, 52 West & South, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, via San Francisco: [Recto] "Bombay 22 March 1905. Very bare. Will"
Bombay. General Post Office.
[Original caption] General Post Office - Here is to be found a very fine building and an immense amount of business is transacted here. [end]
Opened in 1913, with a central dome modelled after the Gol Gumbaz in Bijapur, this remains one of the iconic
India, Bombay-Calcutta
An early "Greetings from" concept card, printed in Italy, possibly to market train service between Mumbai and Kolkata, rife with tropes that Europeans would have associated with India: a tiger (stalking the train?
Simla View from the Cart Road
[Original caption] View from the Cart Road. Simla is in the mountainous region of the Punjab, on the southern slopes of the Himalayas. The town is beautifully laid out and the scenery is magnificent. [end]
Note the boy carrying wood in the foreground
Parade Road, Belgaum
A very nicely coloured card, using side profiles of people, a commonly trope in albumen photography, to mark the scale of a scene. An open road extends across the whole foreground. The shadows fall softly on the right.
Table Boy
From an unusual lithographic series, a marvelous rendition of a type still very active throughout the subcontinent and restaurants abroad.
The Museum, Udaipur
A curious card, with the white space in the top corner intended for a written message by the sender before messages were allowed on the backs of postcard after 1905. The original Victoria Hall Museum, opened in 1890, has since moved to the City
Dalhousie Square, Calcutta
[Original caption] Dalhousie Square.
A Burmese Beauty
A skirt or longyis is topped by a loosely fitted long sleeve shirt and the lady wears two necklaces, one a choker and another a longer one.
