Another image from Samuel Bourne's collection focusing on Delhi. This was taken from the Jama Masjid in Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi) and shows the Lal Qila (Red Fort) in the distance. Remarkably, since Bourne captured this photograph in 1862, it documents the freshly demolished area between the Fort and the Jama Masjid.
The mounds of rubble in the foreground are telling — they mark the remnants of entire neighbourhoods, havelis, mosques, and work quarters that were razed by the authorities. As we know, this demolition was carried out to create a ‘firing line’ from the Fort — a military measure intended to secure the city in the aftermath of the 1857 uprising.
I haven’t come across any other photographic records of the demolitions from this period, making this an especially valuable image. Bourne’s aesthetic of desolation — or, in other words, his inclination to depict Delhi in a state of decay — inadvertently captures the cataclysmic transformation of the city’s urban fabric.
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