1866
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Lucknow. The Kaiser Pass and Southeast View is a 1866 by Samuel Bourne, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a black-and-white photo of a winding mountain road cutting through steep cliffs near Lucknow. This was taken in the 1860s, before cameras were common. Bourne lugged heavy gear up the Himalayas to document places most Brits would never visit. The photo shows what the Taj Mahal and Mughal mosques looked like before later repairs—like a time machine. If you like old travel photos, look up Samuel Bourne (British, 1834–1912).
The 50 images in this album, all taken in the 1860s, move from the hill towns of the Himalayas down to cities including Lahore (now in Pakistan), Delhi, Lucknow, Agra, Benares (now Varansi), and Calcutta (now Kolkata). Architectural studies of major monuments offer valuable historical records of what sites such as the Taj Mahal and the imperial mosque of the Mughal emperors in Delhi looked like before twentieth-century restorations.
Samuel Bourne, the author of most the images in this album, was a banker in England before he moved to India to become a professional photographer.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Samuel Bourne was a British photographer known for his prolific seven years' work in India, from 1863 to 1870.
See the richer artist page
