Delhi's Tughlaqabad in the 1860s

A photograph of the ruins of Tughlaqabad (on the outskirts of Delhi) from amateur photographer Samuel Bourne’s travels through India in the 1860s. Captured in the wake of the Rebellion of 1857, this image forms part of the broader colonial project to document the Indian landscape through a distinctly imperial lens (I have written about this previously in a post to do with Bourne and Shepherd's photographic studio). Delhi (Bourne took several photographs of the city of Delhi/Shahjahanabad and its environs) and Tughlaqabad are represented as desolate and decaying - contrasting directly with the modern and progressive force of British power. Therefore, the image of decay served both artistic and political purposes in the colonial archive.