Home
Shopping cart (0 items € 0)
Go Back

Interesting and intimate photograph album showing buildings, views, people and life in Calcutta in the 1870s

[PHOTOGRAPHY - INDIA].
[Manuscript title on the front paste-down:] Views of Calcutta.
Calcutta, [ca. 1874/79]. Oblong 8vo. With 33 mounted sepia albumen prints (ca. 15/15.5 x 10.5/11 cm), all captioned. Manuscript title and captions of the pictures in English, written in brown ink in a neat 19th-century cursive hand. Contemporary gold-tooled half red morocco, brown cloth sides. [2 blank], [25], [1 blank], [8], [2 blank] pp.
€ 6,500
Photograph album containing 33 albumen prints of buildings, important places, views and people in Calcutta in the 1870s. The album opens with some architectural photographs, including the governor's house, the new market, the post office, St. Paul's cathedral and the high court. Also included are views of roads and streets that are still important today such as Benting Street, Chilpore Road, Russell Street and Strand Road, and 5 albumen prints of the B.Y. Docks. The album also contains views near Kalighat and Barnatore, especially of the landscape, but also of a Hindu temple. The album concludes with some photographs of people living in Calcutta, showing beggars, carpenters, palki bearers, a barber, ending the album with a group of Rohillas.
The album includes a photograph of the statue of Sir James Outram, unveiled in Calcutta on 22 May 1874, an all photographs seem likely to have been made soon after that.
Binding a little worn and scuffed, endpapers a little dust-soiled, some leaves marginally slightly dust-soiled, some leaves slightly browned, some occasional foxing, paper of the last photograph slightly damaged (not affecting the image), some images a little faded, but overall in good condition. A highly interesting album, showing life in Calcutta in the 1870s. For dating the statue of Sir James Outram: Catalogue of the sculpture of J.H. Foley, in: Dublin Historical Record 32, 3 (1979), pp. 108-116.
Order Inquire Terms of sale

Related Subjects:

Art, architecture & photography  >  Photography
Asia  >  India & Sri Lanka
Cartography & exploration  >  Anthroplogy & Ethnography | Asia