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Unidentified photographer
Egg sellers, Darjeeling
1880s (ca)
Albumen print, on album page with scraps
Swann Galleries - New York
21 October 2021, Sale 2583, Lot: 1
LL/115036
An album with 26 photographs, including scenes from Calcutta [Kolkata], Delhi, and Darjeeling.
The album depicts major landmarks in each city, including temples, hotels, and colonial government buildings; street and river scenes; and portraits of local figures, including portraits of men and women described as Bhutia. The album features Darjeeling, which was a favorite destination of the colonial British, as well as bustling scenes of bridges and streets, and an Indian juggler. The images are all seemingly hand-selected, the photographs set into a stylized scrapbook. Each are interspersed with meticulously cut and collaged elements, some added embellishments on the mounts surrounding the images, and other full pages of cut elements, including fruit, flowers, bucolic country scenes, and children. Albumen prints, the images measuring 8x6 to 9 1/4x11 1/2 inches (20.3x15.2 to 23.5x29.2 cm.), and the reverse, mounted recto/verso, most with captions, in ink, below the images.
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