Mar 11 2010

  • Inside a Ceylonese Graphite Mine

    graphite-mine

    This photograph shows men working at a graphite mine in Sri Lanka [Ceylon]. It probably was taken at Bogala, then the country's principal graphite mine in the 1880s. Graphite, a form of carbon, is used in pencils and numerous industrial goods and compounds.Read more

  • A Lurid Magic Lantern Slide

    India 1857 by Joseph Boggs Beale
    The Sepoy Rebellion by Joseph Boggs Beale, a powerful magic lantern slide, was published in 1899. Beale was America's foremost Victorian magic lantern artist. It was his only slide of India among the 2,000 that he drew.Read more

  • Pakistan Alive

    Rashid Rana Red Carpet
    As a tonic for the relentless bad news pouring out of Pakistan, on a recent trip to New York I slipped uptown to the Asia Society. What is billed as the first major US exhibition on contemporary Pakistani art had recently opened.Read more

  • A Shocking Postcard

    Habibullah Kalakani
    As the situation in modern Afghanistan (and Pakistan) continues to deteriorate, I cannot help but remember one of the most extraordinary postcards in my collection. It shows the dead body of the so-called "Bandit King" of Afghanistan, Habibullah Kalakani, after he was killed on the 13th of October 1929, almost exactly 70 years ago.Read more

  • The British Empire in Colour

    British Empire in Color
    The period from 1900 to 1950 seems firmly entrenched in my mind in black and white.

    From the 1960s onwards, color images are mixed together with black and white ones. Color television and washed out Agfacolor take over in the 1970s. By the 1980s glossy Fujicolor reigns supreme.Read more

  • An Early Indian Book with Color Photographs

    People of India
    Typical Pictures of Indian Natives by F.M. Coleman was one one of the earliest books with color photographs published in India. It appeared in October 1897 and went through several editions.

    The half-tone printing process had just started coming into widespread use. It provided the first economical way to reproduce photographs in books and magazines. Color half-tone printing was particularly novel.Read more