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Travel Photography: Early Images of India March 2, 2002 - July 17, 2002
Admission is free.
Travel Photography: Early Images of India will bring together eight mid-19th-century black-and-white photographs and a paper negative from the permanent collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art that reveal India's landscape and architecture through the eyes of resident and visiting British photographers. The show will complement the major exhibition "Treasury of the World": Jeweled Arts of India in the Age of the Mughals. Admission is free.
"These early practitioners succeeded in making varied and intriguing images despite incredible technical, physical, and logistical problems," explains Tom E. Hinson, CMA's curator of photography. "These richly detailed and beautifully composed photographs are an interesting counterpart to Jeweled Arts of India."
Photography was introduced in India in the 1840s. By the mid-1850s, the East India Company had replaced draftsmen with photographers, a more efficient means to record India's remarkable architecture and landscape.
Pioneering photographer Samuel Bourne (1834-1912), considered one of the most important British expeditionary photographers, made Temple at Naveshera, Kashmir, India in 1864. The decaying temple stretches horizontally across the frame, though steep mountains in the background stress the dominance of nature.
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Captain Linnaeus Tripe (1822-1902) created Great Pagoda, Great Bull, Front View, Tanjore, India (Ræjaræje"vara Temple) about 1857. This dramatic photograph of a stone temple, which occupies most of the frame, conveys the massive size of the monument. When built, it was one of the largest buildings in South Asia.
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A recent acquisition will also be featured in the exhibition - Richard Banner Oakeley's Holysaleswara Temple Sculpture, Halebid (1856-57) highlights that monument's ornate sculptural reliefs of Hindu deities.
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