Cooly Woman
The original black and white postcard predating the color version.
Women
Happy
A truly multi-purpose postcard by Paul Gerhardt.
A Kandyan Lady
A refreshing portrait of a woman looking straight back at the viewer, not contained by the frame. Most probably from a portrait by Charles Scowen in the 1870s, who photographed the same woman in slightly different poses.
A Fair Exchange
An early lithographic card by the elusive Bombay lithographer and publisher W. Cooper. Like some of this other cards, it seems to have originated in a photograph also published as a postcard by The Phototype Co.
Group of Mogul Empresses
Although the women do look somewhat similar in this set of a dozen Mughal Empresses, they can be identified individually thanks to the Urdu captions beneath each: [From Top Left to Top Right, First Row] Jamila Khatoon W/o [Wife of] Muhammad Mirza,
Water Carrier, Chumba
The Princely State of Chamba appeared on few postcards during the Raj even though its rulers seemed to have good relationships with a number of Punjab-based photographers, including Fred Bremner and John Burke.
His Photo
An unusual card which shows a woman, presumably a dancer, looking at the the photograph of a man, a self-reflexive trope that may or may not be recognized by us, who hold the postcard in our hands.
A Benares Dancing Girl
This card, sent by a Mr. Seamus on Dec. 1, 1905 from Kolkata, has a stamp positioned in the top that extends the tilt of the woman's head.
Haunsa-Damayanti Sanvada
[Original caption, verso] Haunsa Damayanti Sanvada:–The bird Haunsa gave and extols to Damayanti all about Nala, when she is in a garden. [end]
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
