Title: "Shiva as a destroyer, preserver and creator, India, 1875" (from the Caves of Elephanta series.)
Photographer: Samuel Bourne (England, 1834-1912); Bourne and Shepherd Indian Photography Studio, established 1866.
Date: 1875
Medium: Original antique albumin photograph
Measurements: Sheet size: 8-7/8 x 11-7/8 inches; mounted on (later?) board-stock measuring 15 x 17-3/4 inches.
Condition: Very good condition with minor craquelure to varnish finish. Possibly trimmed at bottom (and other edges?) with negative number partially visible.
Notes:
Bourne & Shepherd was an Indian photographic studio and one of the oldest established photographic businesses in the world. Established in 1863, at its peak, it was the most successful commercial firm in 19th-and early 20th-century India, with agencies all over India, and outlets in London and Paris, and also ran a mail order service. A devastating fire in 1991 destroyed much of the studio's photographic archive and resulted in a severe financial loss to the firm. The long-term impact of the fire, legal difficulties with the Indian government, which owned the studio building, and the increasing dominance of digital technology, finally forced the studio's closure in June 2016. At its closure, the studio had operated continuously for 176 years.
Biography:
Samuel Bourne (England, 1834-1912)
Samuel Bourne was a British photographer known for his prolific seven years' work in India, from 1863 to 1870. Together with Charles Shepherd, he set up Bourne & Shepherd first in Shimla in 1863 and later in Kolkata (Calcutta); the company closed in June 2016.
Bourne spent six extremely productive years in India, and by the time he returned to England in January 1871, he had made approximately 2,200 fine images of the landscape and architecture of India and the Himalayas. Working primarily with a 10x12 inch plate camera, and using the complicated and laborious Wet Plate Collodion process, the impressive body of work he produced was always of superb technical quality and often of artistic brilliance. His ability to create superb photographs whilst traveling in the remotest areas of the Himalayas and working under the most exacting physical conditions, places him firmly amongst the very finest of nineteenth century travel photographers.