The Lafayette Studio and Princely India - Full Size

Author: Russell Harris
Publisher: Roli Books
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 95
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8174363599

Description

The negative archive of the Lafayette photography studio, discovered in 1968 and now held by the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, reveals a panoply of Indian rulers who made the arduous trip to the heart of the Empire and were photographed heavily bejeweled and in exotic finery-the courts of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII expected no less of them.

The immaculately preserved negatives in this collection reconstruct a vanished history of opulence, grandeur and pageantry that laced the great state occasions of this period. In these images, M Lafayette (late of Paris) of Bond Street, presents the maharajas, maharanis and nawabs as they wished to be remembered by posterity.