India in 1887 as seen by Robert Wallace / [Robert Wallace].

  • Robert Wallace
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: India in 1887 as seen by Robert Wallace / [Robert Wallace]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    bound up in the existence of British rule, which is a synonymous term with British freedom. I have been careful in acknowledging my sources of information where this was possible or expedient, but should any of my many esteemed friends be inadvertently omitted, I hope they will be generous enough to forget and forgive my shortcoming as an oversight. I hope, too, that the consistent omission of the prefix “Mr” will not be thought in any sense to lack courtesy. I have to apologise to my readers for the condition of a number of the collotype plates representing cattle. The defects are not attributable to Waterlow & Sons, London, who printed them, but to the poor and, in some instances, very imperfect negatives which I supplied. Nearly all of the original photographs were taken by myself in India. [Those borrowed I have acknowledged elsewhere.] I feel that I may claim indulgence on the ground, that five days before I left Edinburgh for India I knew nothing practically of photography,1 and of the difficulties in India for a beginner, in the shape of moisture and the inconveniences arising from keeping constantly on the move, with the impossibility of being able to find a dark room or even a dark corner. For weeks I had nightly to change my plates (adjusting them altogether by touch) under the folds of my traveller’s blanket. To succeed in developing negatives myself was impossible under the circumstances. I now gratefully acknowledge the valuable assistance in this matter rendered by Baldwin in Cawnpur, Skeen in Colombo, and Hughes in Madras, all of whom were pleased to devote themselves to my assistance. In determining what plates should appear in my work, I sank the idea of ornament altogether in favour of anything which might serve to elucidate a point which required 1 My painstaking instructor was the Secretary of the Edinburgh Amateur Photographic Society, \V. Forgan, Bristo Place, to whose tuition I am indebted for the ability to bring home anything worthy of being reproduced.
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