Shipping on the Hooghly
An example of how the earliest postcards of a place were often design masterpieces. Note how the palm tree merges with the ship masts, and nautical rope and elements carefully surround the whole frame.
B & W
The Club of Western India. Poona
Benjamin B. Cohen, in his highly informative study of Raj clubs, In the club Associational Life in colonial South Asia writes: "Locating the center of the [colonial] club's sphere at Government House de-centered the club and reflects the strong link
A Kuchi Family
Occasionally, nomads — those most fleeting of human subjects and least sedentary inhabitants of our planet—were caught on a postcard.
Snake Charmer, Jaipur
Not many snake charmers make it into a photographer's studio, but here the soft floral backdrop and line of the flute reinforces the sense of the cobras emerging gracefully from their basket.
Ceylon
A later "Greetings from" postcard where the divided back, allowing people to write messages on the back of cards in addition to the address, allowed the publisher to put many more photographs of the place on the front.
View at Soonamurg
Postmarked Dec. 19, 1903, and sent to Mr. Harington, Bath, England: “Simla 16.12.03. Thank you so much for sending the very pretty pictures cards of Bath. They don’t get them up half as well out here! Best Love, Gracie.”
The Bazaar, Mooltan City
A rare postcard from inside the city of Multan, one of the oldest cities in Punjab if not South Asia.
A Corner of Kandy Lake, Ceylon
An example of how nicely the real photo postcard could be used to maximize the depth and mystery of black and white photography, here on glossy stock by A.W. Plate & Co., a firm which tried every type of postcard printing process.
A Hill Coolie Girl
Although a coolie – "a hired labourer, or burden-carrier"(Hobson-Jobson, p. 249) – were at the bottom of the social ladder, and the word is said to originally come from Kolis, a hill-people in the Western Ghats, "whose savagery, filth and general
Khojak Tunnel
Engineering feats were a common theme on early postcards, particularly those which also had an "imperial" or conquest sub-text. especially in the western part of the Raj like Balochistan.
