> Review Lucknow: City of Illusion

Llewellyn-Jones, Rosie. ed. 2006. Lucknow: City of Illusion: New York, London, New Delhi: Prestel and the Alkazi Collection of Photography. 296 pages, ISBN 3 7913 313o 2

Felice Beato, albumen print 1858. Panorama of the Husainabad Imambara, Lucknow. The Alkazi Collection

Gerda Theuns-de Boer Monumental grief into a city of severe grief. The albumen sepoys, (Indian soldiers who served in records of human and monumental Architecture is the focus of the book prints of the Greek-British photographer the British armed forces), he decided to disaster. His photographs of the human his beautifully produced and print- as it is the only means to express not Felice Beato (1834-c.1907) are the main come down from the Crimea, where he remains of the slaughter of around Ted book presents a visual and his- only the city ‘s former wealth, but also source for studying the city‘s architec- had been photographing, among other 2000 sepoys in Lucknow‘s Sikandar toric record of the development of the the effects of general decay and the par- ture and design in the direct aftermath things, the fall of Sebastopol in Sep- Bagh are renowned, but it is his images city of Lucknow, (Uttar Pradesh, India), tial destruction caused by the ‘1857-58 of the mutiny and are well represented tember 1855. He arrived in Calcutta in of the ruined city which are featured in from its establishment as the Nawabi Uprising‘, (a mutiny by Indian soldiers in the book.2 Beato is regarded as one of February 1858. In March of that same this book. capital in 1775 until its annexation by serving under the British Army), in the first war photographers, document- year he was licenced by the East India the British East India Company in 1856. which ‘large sectors of a once radiant ing army campaigns and their devastat- Company to photograph in Lucknow, The prints evoke the oppressive atmos- The main visual source of the material and sparkling city were reduced to rub- ing effects. The moment he heard of Cawnpur and Delhi.3 His photographs phere of a city in ruins, with its ‘sounds used is the fabulous Alkazi photo col- ble’, (p.7). Lucknow was transformed the British campaigns against the rebel have become landmark visual historic of silence’. The absence of people in lection.1 This naturally brings the focus the compositions and the limited tone of the book on the second half of the scale of 19th century photography, add a 19th century. A time when photogra- Felice Beato, albu- sense of drama. The eight enlargements phy developed from pioneering activi- men prints 1858. Four of Beato‘s 360 degree panoramic views ties into professionalism and advancing albumen photographs taken from the minarets of the Asafi photomechanical techniques resulted from a set of eight Mosque within the Great Imambara in the birth of the postcard, around views taken from one Complex, have great historic value and 1895. A selection of photographs dat- of the minarets of the also bear witness to the British efforts ing from the 1850s to the 1920s testify Asafi Mosque, Great to hastily dispose of any references to to the original context of the buildings, Imambara, Lucknow. the city‘s former glory by general clear- their alterations and decay or even their ance. disappearance. The book successfully merges, (and therefore strengthens), a From Kothi to country house number of different sources. The qual- But the book is not meant to commem- ity of both the research by its seven con- orate the Uprising. Its seven contribu- tributors and the careful selection of tors construct a contextual background the imagery, originating from 15 early to the many photographs and other photographers, makes this book a treat. illustrations which are rendered to For too long the written and the visual sketch Lucknow‘s development from record were explicitly separated, as if a Nawabi capital into a spatial organi- its respective scholars missed the drive sation influenced by European styles to look beyond their self-constructed and programmes of decorations, testi- walls. Historical books were sparsely fying to the growing political pressure illustrated, which resulted in readers on the indigenous rulers, the Awa- having to put their own, not always dhi nawabs. Whereas Sophie Gordon accurate, interpretation on the text; focuses on the nine royal palaces which whereas photo books still had a strong constituted the dream world of Nawabi album format, predominantly stressing culture from 1739 onwards, E. Alkazi the picturesque, but seldom contextual- and Peter Chelkowski focus on Luc- ising their historical content. know‘s number one monument - the

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Bara Imambara or the Asafi Imambara. cussed by Nina David. It is a tribute to catalogue part of the book in thumbnail- Notes 4 To catch some more glimpses see Sophie Built by Kifayutaullah between 1784- the French military man, educationalist, format and the short descriptions of 1 The privately owned Alkazi Archive is Gordon‘s article ‘A city of mourning: The 1791, this is the world‘s largest complex ‘engineer-architect’ and businessman, Lucknow ‘s buildings up to 1856, which available for scholars in New York, Lon- representation of Lucknow, India in nine- devoted to the rituals and cult of Shia Claude Martin (1735-1800). The cen- includes details of their current state. don and New Delhi and comprises 75,000 teenth-century photography’, in History of Imam Husain, who was massacred tral building of the complex, known as photographs of South Asia, North Africa Photography 30:11, pp. 80-91. by Sunni muslims in Karbala (Iraq) ‘Constantia’ was turned into a college in In brief, a marvellous book of serious and the Middle East. in 680. Alkazi presents Beato‘s 360 1845 and still functions as such today. scholarship and perfectly reproduced 2 The book also includes a few 1858 views Gerda Theuns-de Boer degree photographic survey of the com- Martin‘s skeletal remains are kept in the prints, which brings out the techni- by Alixis de la Grange, Captain J. Milleken, Art historian for South and Southeast Asia plex - a cluster of buildings and open basement of the building; a tangible ref- cal characteristics of each photograph. P.G. Fitzgerald, Ahmad Ali Khan and Rob- Photography manager, Kern Institute collec- spaces formed by mosques, gateways, erence to a period in which Nawabs and Revealing the splendours of Lucknow‘s ert and Harriet Tytler. tions, University of Leiden tombs and bazars; Chelkowski provides Europeans could live side by side. past, and to some extent, its present, 3 For a selection of his Delhi views see Jim [email protected] a religious and cult framework. The still was a must. If its architecture had not Masselos & Narayani Gupta Beato ‘s extant Husainabad Imambara, built by Although the book is clear in its aims, been the victim of such a monumental Delhi 1857, 1997. Delhi, 2000: Ravi Dayal Muhammad Ali Shah in 1837-78, is the strict focus on architecture results disaster, it would surely have become Publisher. another example of an Islamic‘ monu- in a somewhat ghost-like image of the one of India‘s most beautiful cities. < ment of grief ‘. In Neeta Das‘ contribu- town, in which photographic portraits tion ‘The country houses of Lucknow’, of its inhabitants are seriously missed. we witness the process of acculturation As the Scottish essayist, Thomas Carlyle between Nawabi and Western architec- once wrote ‘portraits are the candle to tural styles. Das discusses fourteen ‘villa history’. The ‘sounds of silence’ of the type’ houses (kothis) made by and for Uprising‘s aftermath dominate the book the European and Indian elite between in this respect. The only photograph the late-18th and early-19th century. which catches a glimpse of street life is a The oldest kothi dates back to 1775 and print of a shopkeeper by Edmund Lyon. was built by Captain Marsack for nawab In all the other photographs people are Asaf-ud-daula, whereas nawab Saadat depersonalised and merely serve the Ali Khan, who commissioned several purpose of stressing the architecture‘s houses and roads, showed a strong pre- monumentality by their limited size.4 dilection for ‘things European’. Rosie Also, the book barely touches upon Llewellyn-Jones traces the history of the early photography as such. How did its Residency complex, the symbol of colo- photographers manage to create these nial power, which started as a modest photographic jewels in a tropical, pho- bungalow, but was replaced in 1786 by tography-hostile environment and by a more impressive series of buildings. what means did they, each in their own After the final siege of the British, the way, succeed in rendering Lucknow‘s demolished, but much photographed, overpowering monumentality and aes- residency became an object of obses- thetics? Thanks to a valuable appendix sive public interest, not least because by Stéphanie Roy, which includes short of its cemetery containing the graves biographies of the various photogra- of British victims. Another intrigu- phers, we at least get to know some of ing monument, La Martinière, is dis- their background. Equally useful is the

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