Picturesque Views “Mughal India in Nineteenth-Century Photography”

Picturesque Views presents an exquisite selection of sixty-nine masterpieces by the most important photographers of nineteenth-century India. Felice Beato, Thomas Biggs, Samuel Bourne, and John Murray, among other great figures from the pioneering age of photography, are represented with exemplary works. In addition to the impressive prints, the book contains large-format waxed negatives, which were painstakingly retouched with gouache, as well as examples of stereoscopic photography popular at the time. European photographers paid special attention to the architecture and gardens of the Mughals, and this publication includes striking views of the Taj Mahal, the famous monument in Agra, and its surroundings. Photographs from the Kashmir Valley—the erstwhile summer retreat of the Great Mughals—and fascinating, often shocking images of the city of Lucknow succeed in bringing the reader closer to the nineteenth-century India of the Mughals.

Exhibition schedule: Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin, November 9, 2007 – March 2, 2008 Museum Rietberg, Zurich, July 4–October 26, 2008