Linnaeus Tripe
1858
The Teppa-kulam

Albumen silver print, from waxed paper negative
26 x 37.5 cm (10 1/4 x 14 3/4 ins) (image)
 
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gilman Collection, Purchase, Cynthia Hazen Polsky Gift, 2005, Accession Number: 2005.100.381.1.4
 
Curatorial description (Accessed: 14 October 2017)
Tripe was a career military officer in India and, in the late 1850s, government photographer to the Madras Presidency. In just five years he made nearly one thousand views of India and Burma.
 
In this view of a teppakulam, or tank, in Madurai, South India, the mirror-like surface of the water reflects the stripes of the surrounding stone wall. In the accompanying text, Tripe explained that during an annual Hindu festival, likenesses of the god Sundareshwara and goddess Minakshi were rowed around in "a gaily decorated raft," and then brought inside the pavilion, whose intricately carved central tower rises from a mass of dense foliage.
 
LL/78028