E-Paper
Between covers
It?s 9.5 x 11 x 1.5 inches and weighs 2 kg. This may not be the conventional way to review a book but then, this is not a conventional book in the sense that ?Lucknow-City of Illusion? is different from all the previous books on the city. It?s the costliest ever at Rs 4,640 and richest in terms of content. Not just a coffee-table book, it?s surely a document on the history of Lucknow.
It’s 9.5 x 11 x 1.5 inches and weighs 2 kg. This may not be the conventional way to review a book but then, this is not a conventional book in the sense that ‘Lucknow-City of Illusion’ is different from all the previous books on the city. It’s the costliest ever at Rs 4,640 and richest in terms of content. Not just a coffee-table book, it’s surely a document on the history of Lucknow. It has several rare and amazing photographs of Awadh’s buildings from The Alkazi Collection of Photography (ACP), New York-London-New Delhi.
In the words of Rosie Llewellyn-Jones: “…Mr Ebrahim Alkazi, originally conceived the idea of this book and approached me to edit it. Mr Alkazi’s great vision is to make his remarkable collection available to the scholarly and the general public through a series of publications. This is the first volume.”
Besides Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, Peter Chelkowski, Neeta Das, Nina David, Sophie Gordon and Stephanie Roy have co-authored the book published by Prestel, Munich-Berlin-London-New York and printed in Germany. The book’s typography, layout, and production have made it an impressive product. It has 144 photographs, most of them albumen prints from the ACP, a privately owned archive consisting of more than 75,000 19th and early 20th Century photographs from South Asia, North Africa and the Middle East. Amassed over the years, the collection is accessible today to scholars at three locations—New York, London and New Delhi. The core of the collection comprises 19th Century works in the form of albums, single prints, paper negatives and glass plate negatives from India, Myanmar (erstwhile Burma), Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan and Tibet.
Almost every region that has a history touched by the British Raj is represented.
The collection has a number of photographs by lensmen whose contribution to the history of photography in these areas has been significant—Dr John Murray, Felice Beato, Samuel Bourne and Lala Deen Dayal, for example. The book has photographs by Samuel Bourne, John Edward Sache, GW Lawrie & Co, Frith’s Series, Shepherd & Robertson, Edmund David Lyon, many more photographers and of course photographs by Felice Beato. The book is available at major bookstores in the city. “And considering its price, the book is selling well as it is one of the most amazing books on city’s past,” says Chander Prakash of Universal Booksellers.
