Cooly Woman, Darjeeling.
Although taken in the firm's studio, with the woman posing upright, one can from this portrait and the wooden beam infer the literally backbreaking work hillstation workers endured.
Labor
Water Bullock
A nice representation of water being extracted and transported by human and animal labor throughout a village.
Cocoa Palmleaf Plaiters, Malabar
Early postcards from the Malabar coast seem to be relatively rare. In the message below, "Dusk" seems to be a dog.
[Verso] "6-5-20. Aren't they smartly pretty? I expect Dusk would like to bite this calf don't you?
Packetting Tea, Colombo
A nice representation of a small portion of the human labor – a dozen people here – that went into the preparation and production of a commodity like tea.
Fruit Sellers
A delicately hand-tinted postcard, with the green stalks breathing life into the frozen men.
A Potter
One of the most ancient of occupations, showing in the background what must be the larger human ecosystem that depends on the potter's labor.
A Peasant's Hut in Sind
A storybook shot by Fred Bremner, six people poised in performance, reminding us how much children and women's labor keeps the farm going.
A Coolie in the Stocks, Hongkong
Among the more interesting postcards are those showing Indians abroad, in this case serving as police officers in Hong Kong, then also a British possession.
Female Spinning, Jaipur
While this postcard published in Jaipur may have had nothing directly to do with the Swadeshi movement then taking off in Bengal, the charkha was am emblem of that cause for self-sufficiency and using indigenous materials and processes instead of
Punjabi's Weaving Mats
One of my favourite, and among the rarest of early Bremner postcards.
