Multiple Artists
Untitled [A Rare Archive of 80 Postcards Depicting Women in Colonial India]
PICTURING WOMANHOOD: COURTESANS, PERFORMERS AND DOMESTIC LIVES IN EARLY INDIAN POSTCARDS
This exceptional archive of eighty early 20th-century postcards offers a compelling and richly textured visual anthology of femininity, performance, regional identity, and social structure in colonial India and Tibet. Comprising both monochrome and hand-coloured examples, and largely produced for the international postcard trade, these studio...
PICTURING WOMANHOOD: COURTESANS, PERFORMERS AND DOMESTIC LIVES IN EARLY INDIAN POSTCARDS
This exceptional archive of eighty early 20th-century postcards offers a compelling and richly textured visual anthology of femininity, performance, regional identity, and social structure in colonial India and Tibet. Comprising both monochrome and hand-coloured examples, and largely produced for the international postcard trade, these studio and outdoor portraits document a range of female experiences and self-presentations—from the performative elegance of courtesans and dancers to the quiet dignity of domestic labourers, widows, children, and tribal women.
Produced primarily in commercial photography studios in Calcutta, Bombay, and beyond, the postcards epitomise the popularity of the "native types" genre—a colonial visual taxonomy that sought to codify and exoticise India’s vast diversity through staged yet often vivid portraiture. These images, however, also reveal moments of agency and complexity, especially in the way women posed, dressed, and gazed back at the camera, subtly shaping their visual identities within the constraints of colonial modernity.
The collection is thematically rich, featuring striking representations of tawaifs and nautch girls—performers whose elaborate costumes, poised gestures, and ornate jewellery reflect the traditions of North Indian kothas and South Indian dance schools. Cards such as Bhavai Dancers, Bombay, Two Female Dancers, or the double portrait Mysore School Dancers exemplify the interplay between performative artistry and photographic mise-en-scène. Some portraits are further marked by titles like Miss Rukhsar of Jaipur, Miss Husna Jan of Lucknow, or Miss Goolarjan of Calcutta, linking sitters to specific cities and subtly asserting regional pride or cultural affiliation.
Postcards bearing titles such as Indian Princess with Nurse and Perambulator, Ballet Girls, and Hindu Marriage Procession, Bombay present intimate vignettes of familial or ritual life, while others—Parsee Girls Cycling, Calcutta or A Parsi Girl—highlight urban reformist femininity and the new womanhood of India’s elite minorities. Depictions of Ayahs and Hindu Widows reflect the realities of service, piety, and marginalisation, while cards titled Tibetan Lady, Tibetan Women, and Tibetan Family expand the ethnographic scope to include India’s northern Himalayan frontiers, capturing the colonial imagination of its perceived cultural "other."
Captions played a pivotal role in shaping viewer perceptions. The frequent use of the prefix “Miss” (e.g. Miss Zubeida of Lucknow, Miss Daria of Allahabad) reveals a colonial-era gloss over Indian naming conventions and perhaps a conscious effort to elevate artistic or courtesan identities into palatable respectability for a Western audience. At the same time, tableaux such as Jessie’s Dream at Lucknow or A Young India Star draw on theatrical or cinematic storytelling, interweaving imperial mythologies with evolving Indian popular culture.
Together, these eighty postcards form an invaluable micro-archive of early modern South Asian womanhood as captured, categorised, and commodified through the medium of photography. They encapsulate the shifting tensions between ethnographic curiosity, visual anthropology, popular entertainment, and emergent self-representation. As a collective, they not only reflect the colonial lens but also challenge it—presenting women as performers, professionals, mothers, servants, devotees, and subjects of admiration and artistic inquiry in their own right.
1. Courtesans and Nautch Girls: Performance and Patronage
This section brings into focus the visual legacy of courtesans, tawaifs, and nautch girls—central figures in India’s performative and courtly traditions. Captured in moments of repose, dance, and adornment, these images reflect the aesthetics of female performance and the complex intersection of colonial voyeurism, artistic patronage, and cultural display.
Indian Dancing Girl (4), Miss Gowharjan of Calcutta (3), Goharjan (Songstress of Calcutta), Miss Benzir of Allahabad, Miss Rangili Jan of Lucknow, Miss Ghabukswari of Delhi, Miss Ramarakhi of Aillibhit, Miss Gauhar (Indian Actress), Miss Husso Jan of Lucknow, Nazeerjan. Beauty of Allahabad, Miss Mogal Jan of Lucknow, Miss Chanda of Hyderabad, Miss Buchwa Jan of Lucknow, Kashmir Nautch Girl, Gohar & Jaura (2), Playing the Satar, Untitled, A Young Indian Actor, Gowberjan. Beauty of Calcutta
Waiting, Nautch Girl (2), Dancing Girl and Musician, Bombay Dancing Girls, Mysore Kolatum Dancers, Beegum (Songstress of Lucknow)
2. Girlhood: Young Females in Colonial Visual Culture
Juxtaposing innocence and formality, these portraits of girls across caste and community lines evoke the colonial fascination with the formative years of femininity. Poised yet unguarded, the sitters embody early 20th-century visual tropes of moral purity, domesticity, and ethnographic interest.
Madras Bunt, A Kashmiri, A Young Ayah, A Parsi Girl, Salaams from India, Hindu Girl
3. Portraiture and Studio Realism
A celebration of the photographic studio as a site of self-fashioning and aspirational modernity, these portraits depict women of varied communities posing with quiet agency. Carefully choreographed yet deeply personal, the images record not only appearances but evolving ideals of decorum, dress, and identity.
A Parsee Lady, A Marwaree Woman, Miss Khurshed of Jeypore, Miss Khurshed of Jeypore, Brahmin Woman, A type of Mysore beauty, Hindu Woman, Inderkanwer. Meerut, A Model of Rajput Beauty, Hindu Woman, Brahmin Beauty, A Beauty of Ramnagar, Parsee Lady
4. Representing Devotion: Women and Faith
These images foreground women’s devotional roles within Hindu, Muslim, and Parsi religious life. Whether depicted in acts of prayer, scriptural study, or spiritual service, they reflect both ritual embodiment and the colonial photographer’s urge to record the sacred in human form.
Mohomedan Indian Ladies reading Koran (Holy Book), Hindu Woman at Prayers, Noor Jahan, Jessie’s Dream at Lucknow, A Brahmin Lady
5. Tribal and Adivasi Women: Identity and Dress
This theme gathers rare and often misrepresented portraits of women from tribal and indigenous communities across the subcontinent. Framed within ethnographic paradigms of the time, these images nonetheless capture distinct cultural markers—attire, ornaments, and posture—central to identity and resilience.
A Marwaree Woman, Tibetan Women, Nepalese Family, An Ideal Cycling Costume, Bhutia Woman, Tamil Woman, showing ear jewels, Ceylon, A Bhutia Beauty, Dancing Party, Chota Nagpur, A Type of Marwaree Beauty, Tibetan Lady
6. Women at Work: Trades, Occupations and Labour
A visual archive of women as labourers, domestic workers, artisans, and entertainers, this section disrupts passive colonial stereotypes. These working women—often barefoot and in motion—represent economic agency, skill, and the unseen backbone of colonial India’s social fabric.
A Bombay Scorcher, Milk Woman, An Ayah, An Ayah, Ayahs, Untitled, Ayah (Indian Nurse), Coolie Women, The Milk Woman, Hindu Ayahs
7. Mixed Types: Processional and Group Portraits
These group compositions offer staged yet revealing insights into the constructed identities of Indian women across professions, geographies, and social bonds. Often captioned reductively, the images belie the layered narratives of sisterhood, caste, companionship, and performative unity under the colonial lens.
Parsee Ladies, Kathiawar family, Indian Maypole dance, Parsi Marriage Procession, Bombay
8. Mothers, Children and Domestic Life
Anchoring womanhood in the intimate rhythms of domesticity, this selection portrays women with children, in household settings, or engaged in acts of nurture. They offer a counterpoint to public performance, instead foregrounding the everyday dignity and emotional registers of familial life.
Feeding the Canary
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